LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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Class 1)961 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FROM IRISH CASTLES 
TO FRENCH CHATEAuX 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/fromirishcastlesOOcars 



FROM IRISH CASTLES 
TO FRENCH CHATEAUX 



BY 

NORMA BRIGHT CARSON 

AUTHOR OF "THE DREAM CHILD AND OTHER POEMS 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE 
AUTHOR AND OTHERS 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






^ o-^ 

\'--^ 



Copyright, 1910 

By Small, Maynard & Company 

(incobporated) 

Entered at Stationers* Hall 



CGLA268^36 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

Since certain portions of this volume first 
appeared as a series of articles in "The Book 
News Monthly " of Philadelphia, I wish here 
to express my appreciation for the kind per- 
mission given by Mr. John Wanamaker, the 
publisher of that magazine, to use the material 
in the present form. 

I desire also to acknowledge my indebted- 
ness to my husband, Mr. Robert Carson, for his 
help in procuring many of the photographs 
that appear as illustrations, and to express my 
gratitude to Mr. W. J. Roberts, a literary col- 
league in London, for the use of the pictures 
that bear his name. 



CONTENTS 

Page 
I To THE North of Ireland ... 3 

II From the Causeway to Ardrossan 17 

III Alloway To-day : A Triumph in 

Landscape Gardening .... 25 

IV In the Scotch Lake Country . . 41 
V Edinburgh the Picturesque ... 59 

VI Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford . . 81 
VII Two Quaint Cathedral Cities : 
Ancient Rome in the Heart of 

England loi 

VIII London : A Historic and Literary 

Ghostland 117 

IX House-Cleaning in Westminster 

Abbey 145 

X The Homes of Milton 159 

XI Stratford-on-Avon : The Beautiful 

and the Incongruous . . . . 185 
vii 



CONTENTS 

Page 
' XII Paris : A Sketch in Impressionism . 203 

XIII Versailles and Fontainebleau: 

Tombs of a Dead Glory . . 217 

XIV When the Sea Storms : Three 

Fragments 235 



viu 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Interior of St. Clement Danes Church . Frontispiece 

Facing Page 

Landing Stage, New York 4 

Photographed from the rear deck of the Mauretania 

An Irish Homestead 6 

Shane's Castle, Ireland 10 

At the Giants' Causeway 18 

Ladies' Bathing Place, Portrush 20 

The Burns Cottage, Alloway 26 

From the garden 

The Garden of the Burns Cottage .... 28 

Photograph by N. B, Carson 

The " AuLD Brig," Ayr 30 

The " AuLD Alloway Kirk " ...... 32 

The Burns Museum, Alloway 34 

Photograph by N. B. Carson 

The Burns Monument at Alloway .... 36 

Taken from the old '* Brig o' Doon." Photograph 
by N. B. Carson 

The Burns Statue, Ayr 38 

Photograph by N. B. Carson 

Loch Lomond 42, 54 

Photograph by N. B. Carson 

ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing Page 

Ellen's Isle, Loch Katrine ....... 50 

Photographs by N. B. Carson 
Princes Street, Edinburgh 74. 

Showing the Scott Monument 

Abbotsford and the Eildon Hills .... 86 

Melrose Abbey, South Transept and Tower . 92 

Dryburgh Abbey 94 

Scott's Favorite Seat in Melrose Abbey . . 96 

Where he wrote much of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel " 
Photograph by N. B, Carson 

York, from the City Walls ....... 104 

York Minster, West Front 108 

Lincoln Cathedral from the East . . . . iio 

Newport Arch, Lincoln 112 

The Thames Embankment, from the Hotel 

Metropole 118 

Photograph by N. B. Carson 

London from St. Paul's 122 

St. John's Gate 126 

Where Dr. Johnson did hack-work for Cave. Photograph 
by N. B. Carson 

Johnson Building, The Temple 128 

The Supposed Grave of Goldsmith, Temple 

Gardens 130 

Photograph by W. J. Roberts 

Gough Square 132 

Showing the house in which Dr. Johnson finished the 
** Dictionary." Photograph by N. B. Carson 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing Page 

Interior of the " Cheshire Cheese," Fleet 

Street, London 134 

Showing what is popularly believed to be Dr. Johnson's favorite 
seat. Photograph by W. J. Roberts 

The Milton Tablet in Bread Street . . . 162 

Christ's College, Cambridge 164 

Where Milton studied 

The Old Library at Langley Marish . . . 166 
The Interior of the Milton Cottage . . . 178 
The Avon, with Trinity Church in the Dis- 
tance 186 

The Shakespeare House from the Garden . 188 

The Shakespeare Memorial 194 

Place de l'Opera, Paris 206 

The Gardens at Versailles 218 

The Fountain of Apollo, Versailles .... 222 

The Fountain of the Sun, Versailles . . . 224 

The Palace at Fontainebleau 226, 228 

The Forest of Fontainebleau 230 

Rear Deck of the Mauretania 240 



XI 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 



SUNSET ON THE SEA 

Skies sundered by a flashing, seething roar, 
All golden, glimmering, gleaming more and more 
As wider fly the gates of Heaven's blue 
That the persistent Sun may sweep unhindered 
through. 

Far in his wake he leaves a city glowing, 
'Neath purple clouds each moment denser grow- 
ing— 
Proudly, majestically, he takes away his light, 
And leaves the world to settle down to night. 

But not before the sea he 's gently kissed, 
And wrapped the waves in warming, golden mist; 
Nor yet before the clouds he 's silver-lined. 
And playful patterns on the dimming sky de- 
signed — 

A final burst of splendor; then the gray 
That blurs with patient slowness the long, shining 
way. 



FROM IRISH CASTLES TO 
FRENCH CHATEAUX 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

Amid frantic cheering, hat-throwing, and 
umbrella-waving on the landing-stage, the 
Mauretania slid majestically out of the dock 
and turned her huge bulk with a long, slow 
swing that headed her for the sea. It was 
the summer of 1908, and the two great Cu- 
narders were still among the wonders of 
the Hudson, as they were still matters of 
new experience even to the oldest seafarers 
aboard. 

To write of the particular trip, the end of 
which found us in Liverpool, would be but 
to recount the events, or rather the lack of 
events, that make any ocean voyage on a 

3 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

calm sea a monotonous round of eating, 
deck-walking, ocean-gazing, sleeping, and 
"' small talk/^ Everybody was bored, and 
only the sunsets ministered to the delights 
of the spirit. At least, that was so until our 
last day out, when, late in the afternoon, a 
far-off mist-line cut across the clouds, and 
little by little the Irish cliffs came into view. 

A day in Liverpool, the night boat to 
Belfast; by morning v/e were in Ireland, 
We felt that now, and now only, our trip had 
begun. 

Everything in Ireland has the appearance 
of being small. Her hills are numerous but 
low; her fields are like so many pieces of 
patchwork comprising a pattern; her mini- 
ature farmhouses nestle with an air of capti- 
vating shyness in the luxury of fragrant 
hedges. Some one has complained that in 
Ireland even the landscape is small — not a 
well-founded complaint, but a most apt de- 
scriptive expression. 

4 



i 




Landing Stage, New York 
Photographed from the rear deck of the Mauretania 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

Summer in Ireland is a gentle, inoffensive 
affair. There is no indulgence in spectac- 
ular electrical storms; there are no fierce 
waves of heat that consume and wither. 
True, the sun shines with a certain hint of 
subdued sullenness and a persistent threat of 
storms to come; gray clouds chase over the 
blue sky and tumble toward the earth with 
an impudence that is almost a challenge ; but 
when the rain arrives, it falls with a sweet- 
ness and grace, with a quiet earnestness, and 
an absence of fluster that would put the 
angry, splashing little showers and down- 
rightly serious outpourings of our own land 
to shame. In Scotland they call these fre- 
quent gentle rainfalls " Scotch Mist " ; the 
ever-varying aspect of the Irish sky has 
made it a common saying among the 
people that Ireland has no weather — only 
" samples 'M 

The North of Ireland wears a look of 
prosperity. The farms are beautifully 

5 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

kept; the cottages in many cases are over- 
run with rambHng roses and flowering 
vines; the fields are painstakingly marked 
out, now with low hedgerows, or again with 
irregularly-laid dykes of gray stone. Trees 
are scarce; they grow in clusters — tall, 
lanky guards scattered over the rolling land- 
scape, with its ascending and descending 
meadows, which give the impression that 
every available inch of pasture space and 
potato or flax-growing land has been utilized. 
The people in the country districts of 
North Ireland are a quaint, plain, kind- 
hearted folk, living a life free from compli- 
cations and stress, their interests centering 
in their homes, their children, and their 
church, their recreation taking the form 
of roadside gossip or a neighborly grouping 
around the kitchen fire in the evenings that 
are cold. Far echoes of American doings 
come over the sea ; news filters up from Par- 
liament sittings in the great world metropo- 

6 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

lis; there are reminiscences of the ravages 
of the " Big Wind," and the afterglow of ex- 
periences from the '' Great Revival of '59." 
Enough to talk about, even for an Irish- 
man, and there is no man of any nation 
who can surpass him in conversational facil- 
ity and powers! 

As one gets nearer the cities, much of this 
is changed, for Belfast, with its neighboring 
towns, presents an up-to-date and business- 
like aspect that is decidedly out of keeping 
with many of the things one hears about 
Irish poverty and slowness. Indeed, there 
are few American cities that surpass Belfast 
in point of beautiful natural environment 
combined with civic cleanness, and one goes 
through the town with the feeling of being 
very much at home. 

Some not too complimentary visitor to 
Ireland has maintained that an Irishman 
takes more care of his pigs than of his chil- 
dren. Personally, I saw no evidence of 

7 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

this, though at the same time it must be 
confessed that few things so stir an Irish 
farmer's industry as the hope of taking 
a fine cart-load of young pigs to the market. 
I have never seen a more fascinating sight 
than that of Htter after Htter of tiny, smooth, 
pink-and-white wriggHng piglets, immacu- 
lately scrubbed and polished, and displayed 
for sale in the Fairhill at Ballymena. It 
would make one's heart ache to eat young 
pork after such a spectacle ! It is as pathetic 
as another Irish custom is funny. I shall 
never forget my first long drive through 
County Antrim in a jaunting-car. Far 
down the road I saw approaching gradually 
a sturdy old farmer, staff in hand, dust-coat 
flying open to the breezes. He came on 
leisurely, in the wake of a great, lumbering 
mass that waddled with deliberate and exas- 
perating slowness. As they drew near I 
discovered that the old farmer's companion 
was a massive fat sow, and their strolling 

8 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

out together presaged Dame Piggy's change 
of ownership. For the farmer was not tak- 
ing his pig for an outing — as I first thought, 
with the stupidity of the city-bred — he was 
driving her to market in the town! 

We took two very dehghtful excursions 
before we left the region of Belfast for 
Portrush and the Giant's Causeway. One 
was to the beautiful glens at Glenariff, in 
County Antrim, and the other was to 
Shane's Castle, the county seat of the famous 
family of O'Neills, at one time Kings of 
Ulster and among the bloodiest and most 
daring fighters Ireland has had. 

At Glenariff the natural beauty of North 
Ireland in its quieter and more romantic 
moods reaches its fullest development. Bank 
holidays have created a picnic ground of this 
bit of wonder wilderness, but popularity has 
served to beautify rather than to destroy 
beauty in this mountain rift, with its tall 
waterfalls, its thick growths of ferns and 

9 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

shamrocks on steep hillsides, its winding 
paths over moss-covered stones and along 
the slopes of precipitous cliffs, and its odd 
crannies bursting with wild flowers. Rus- 
tic bridges span the clear, green valleys or 
lead the way across the sparkling, music- 
making streams; now and again a bird's 
song penetrates the stillness, while the air 
breathes the fragrance of a thousand living, 
growing things. Great pines stretch up- 
ward to the sky, their heads hidden in a pale 
mist, that is lightly dispelled by the sunlight 
pouring through the lacy roofing of the 
branches. From the end of the glen one 
ascends to a point from which the sea is 
visible, also, a picturesque curve of coast- 
line, with the dim forms of a dozen fairy 
ships slipping through a haze of blue and 
silver. The coast is that of Scotland — a 
wonderful view. 

There is less of romance, and more of the 
heroic in the castle on Loch Neagh. One 

10 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

drives and walks through miles of beautiful 
woodland — ■ stately beeches, waving elms, 
and far-spreading oak-trees — to the new 
castle that now houses the present O'Neill. 
The park is carefully tended; the gardens 
are artistically devised; calmly surveying it 
all, there rises a mansion of a luxurious but 
purely conventional order. One may find 
any or all of these things at home and in 
many other places, but one cannot find every- 
where a survival of the days of the Ulster 
Kings, the remnants of the glory of the 
Red Hand ! Where the Shane's Castle park 
reaches the borders of North Ireland's 
largest lake, Loch Neagh, one comes upon 
a group of crumbling but majestic ruins. A 
Norman watch-tower lifts its head over the 
waters ; a sturdy stone wall borders the lake 
at an elevation that must have given the de- 
fenders of the fortress a considerable advan- 
tage over waterside invaders in the days of 
the wars that made the O'Neill chieftains 

II 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

famous. All that remains of the original 
castle consists of some broken, ivy-grown 
walls of varying heights, and certain weird 
and mysterious subterranean passages in 
which the voice awakens a shrill and horrible 
echo, and where the rabbits and rats so in- 
discriminately scamper that it requires cour- 
age in no small degree to brave the darkness 
and the dampness and the fleeting shadows. 

Tradition has it that the original O'Neill 
came over from Scotland with a party of 
invaders, who agreed among themselves that 
he should be King whose hand first touched 
Irish soil. They had trouble in landing, 
however, and in the midst of their striving 
to reach the shore, the O'Neill drew his 
sword, chopped off his left hand at the wrist, 
and threw it to the beach. He then claimed 
the right to the title of King and obtained 
it, hence the O'Neill coat-of-arms carries a 
blood-red hand among its other devices. 

One is tempted to dwell at greater length 

12 



TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND 

upon the many picturesque and interesting 
spots in Northern Ireland, such as quaint 
graveyards, rambHng villages, and charming 
sea-side places, but the limits of space pro- 
hibit any such indulgence. No one gets 
within forty miles of the Giant's Causeway 
without experiencing an irresistible desire to 
see and know this wonderful rocky coast- 
formation, and the popularity of Portrush, 
the Atlantic City, Coney Island, and Brigh- 
ton Beach combined of Ireland, makes the 
Causeway excursion a foregone conclusion. 



13 



FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO 
ARDROSSAN 



SLEMISH 

AVhere purple Slemish heaves its heathered sides, 

And thrusts its scrubby head into the skies, 
"Where rude Atlantic waters roll their tides 

Against the rugged, ragged coastline's rise: 
There pleasant farms, by fragrant hedges bounded. 
By dark and grimy peat-bogs all surrounded, 
Spell prosperous days for Erin's green-gray isle. 

On Slemish sides so broad and heather-clad, 
St. Patrick, long ago, did graze his sheep : 
And dream the dreams to make a sad world glad 

And bring the light of joy to eyes that weep. 
To-day few sheep among the bracken wander. 
No Patrick hither brings his dreams to ponder; 
But over Ireland's North, a watchful guard. 
Old Slemish, bent and hoary, battle-scarred, 
Bids all who 'neath its purple shadows dwell 
To love and live both loyally and welL 



ir 

FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO 
ARDROSSAN 

When God made the world He must have 
experienced a variety of moods that worked 
themselves out in the process of creation. 
The Northern Coast of Ireland was prob- 
ably the result of a very special mood. 
" Giant's Causeway " describes it with an ac- 
curacy that cannot be improved upon, for 
only giants could appropriately inhabit the 
tremendous cliffs, and the deep, dark chasms ; 
cliffs that resound with the roar of a rough 
and aggressive ocean; caverns that rever- 
berate with the dull thud of waves that 
break angrily against stolid, impervious 
walls of rock, and swirling pools of foam- 
ing waters that suck madly at the barriers 
which confine them and dash in impotent 
fury against the sides of huge boulders im- 

2 17 



FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN 

peding their progress. Aptly are the vari- 
ous phenomenal formations designated the 
'^Devil's Punch Bowl"; the "Giant's Soup 
Dish''; the "Wishing Chair." Man finds 
himself diminutive indeed as he leaps from 
one flat octagonal rock to another; as he 
climbs the great steps hewn by time and tide 
from the steep cliff-sides; as he is whirled 
through the caves, and under the high 
arches, in a world that is awesome with its 
echoes, its weird cries of sizzling oceans, its 
ghostly intimations of presences felt but in- 
visible, of powers in force but unseen. 

The Causeway is a happy hunting-ground 
for the picture post-card vender and the 
itinerant photographer, but fortunately Na- 
ture has set limits to the audacity even of 
these. The visitor passes through a spring 
gate, and is free — free to roam over the 
boulders ; among the sleeping pools ; far out 
to the water-line. One may climb up or 
climb down, and always there is the outlook 

i8 




1 



FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN 

to the shining sea, the up-look to the great 
expanse of the heavens, the subHme quiet 
of vast spaces, the imposing calm of a series 
of remarkable natural phenomena, unique in 
achievement, demanding a toll of worship 
for the wonderful forces that have created 
and made these things which are beyond 
man's conceptions and the scope of his 
handiwork, almost beyond the sweep of his 
imagination save as his ability to see opens 
up his comprehension. 

When you have been to the Giant's Cause- 
way you have been to a garden of God, for 
the Voice of the Power that shaped a great 
world in the Void sounds through the si- 
lences of these open spaces, and the Spirit 
that '' moved over the waters " has left His 
footprints in the mighty stones that rise and 
fall and overlap to make this wonderful 
Causeway, which legendary lore has not 
dared to people save with giants. 

At Portrush one takes a boat to Ardros- 
19 



FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN 

san, in Scotland, and the afternoon was wan- 
ing as we put to sea. All the sky was dully- 
glowing with the gradual setting of the sun, 
and a faint mist hung about the coast, soft- 
ening the jagged outlines of the Causeway, 
which we now saw in all its variety and 
beauty from the sea. This view loses some- 
thing of the immensity with which we were 
so much impressed while actually on the 
Causeway, but the wonderful details of the 
formation are here revealed in their entirety 
for the first time. Now the noble sweep of 
the arches, the lofty summits of the cliffs, the 
piled-up crags and tumbling boulders • — well 
might giant figures of an early age have 
trod these steeps and leaped these chasms! 
When the moss shines softly green on the 
hillsides, and the bracken grows brown 
shadows, the hardy aborigines of the North 
may well have lain at ease, their senses 
soothed by the music of the ocean's roar and 
the squall of the sea-gull. 

20 



FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN 

For almost an hour we rode in full view 
of the Causeway, the light growing mel- 
lower with each passing moment. When at 
last we began to draw away, the cliffs were 
enveloped in a purple haze. A mass of 
dull brown, vapor-covered, heaved its bulk 
against a rosy sky, and little by little the 
gray mist grew denser, until only a faint, 
far suggestion of the rugged coast was seen. 

It was dark when we made the dock at 
Ardrossan, and the building ships by the 
waterside loomed like black specters against 
a starry sky. We had seen the sun setting 
on the Causeway ; we had been close at hand 
when the last rose rays kissed the peaks of 
Arran; we had rejoiced over the glow and 
scintillation of the waters as the changing 
lights played upon them; it was night, and 
we had reached Scotch shores ! 



21 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY — A TRIUMPH 
IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



THE PEAKS OF ARRAN 

WouLDST see a fairy-land, forsooth, 

A wonder-land of light and love, in truth? 

Note Arran's peaks upon a moonlit night: 
When shadows chase the gay moonbeams. 
And clouds pursue the helter-skelter gleams; 

While happy waters laugh to see the sight. 

Like dainty barges on a fair lagoon. 
The isles go gently drifting 'neath the moon. 
Their peaks in silv'ry mists discreetly veiled. 
But lights and shadows quickly shift, 
The clouds their filmy mantles lightly lift, 
The island into broad moonlight has sailed. 

But now again the glow is hid. 

The moon once more has mischievously slid 

Behind the swiftly-gathering clouds of gray; 
Lights flash; the darkness deeper grows. 
As Night its shadows all too thickly blows 

And folds the last remaining light away. 



Ill 

ALLOWAY TO-DAY — A TRIUMPH 
IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING 

From Ardrossan to Ayr is but a short train- 
ride, and as to omit Alloway from one's 
itinerary were to miss one of the choicest 
landmarks Scotland has to offer, we made 
our way down to the Country of Burns. 

All Ayr is sacred to the memory of the 
author of " Tam o' Shanter " and " The 
Cotter's Saturday Night." The railway 
station is one huge center of advertisement; 
you are scarcely out of it ere you are con- 
fronted by Lawson's magnificent statue, set 
high in the midst of a generous square, the 
very railings of which are inscribed with the 
monogram " R. B." It is sufficient testi- 
mony to the love in which the Ayrshire 

25 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

people hold their poet that his life-sized 
figure in bronze should so dominate their 
principal city. 

Alloway, as we know, is a bare two miles 
from Ayr. It makes a pleasant walk, if one 
has plenty of leisure, a delightful ride if one 
is pressed for time. The drivers of vehicles 
have learned their lesson well; their enthu- 
siasm over the poet is genuine ; their quota- 
tions are apropos. At precisely the right 
moment the whip is pointed toward the spot 
where supposedly Tam crossed the ford on 
the night of his wild ride; with a gracious 
air of hospitality they drive up before a 
spick-and-span little house on the road- 
way, and grandiloquently invite attention 
to the signboard which explains that this 
is the cottage in which Robert Burns was 
born. 

In January of 1759, when, in the tiny 
kitchen, now scrubbed to immaculateness, 
the eldest son of William Burns first saw 

26 




o « 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

the light, the cottage itself and the surround- 
ing countryside must have looked very dif- 
ferent from what they do to-day. At that 
time Ayr was doubtless skirted round by 
fields and meadows and open lands, small 
farms for the most part, with the typical 
thatch-roofed cottage of the Scotch peas- 
antry for a homestead, where Calvinism held 
full sway and the Devil and eternal torment 
were very live possibilities by way of expe- 
rience. The road out from Ayr was not in 
those days the well-laid, excellently rolled 
drive which to-day leads into Alloway. Poor 
Tam, back from the grave, would surely find 
himself in a strange, strange land among 
the fertile, prosperous fields of the spaces 
between the town and the village. Burns 
himself would never recognize the scene of 
his old haunts in the rows of splendidly 
equipped villas that now make up Alloway. 
The symmetrically trimmed hedges, the care- 
fully laid out gardens, the prim, precise ter- 

27 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

races ^ — these would certainly astonish the 
gay, irresponsible poet whose existence has 
made them possible. 

Burns may have had a garden of his own. 
If so, it was meager. But what of the gar- 
den that now lies back of the cottage, — that 
garden with its smooth, bright lawn, its 
background of blooming, fragrant shrub- 
beries, its tall, fine trees, its even, cemented 
walks ? Go a little distance into the country, 
where no poet has immortalized the ground 
and made it sacred, where no Memorial Trust 
has prepared an artistic landmark, and you 
will find the rough-and-tumble cottage that 
gives Burns his more congruous setting. 
Where the thatch grows moss and blos- 
soms wild flowers, where the whitewash is 
smudged and darkened, where the floors are 
broken and rough, and the honest housewife 
smokes her pipe by the fire as she gently rocks 
her cradle, where the open fire burns brightly 
but not richly, and the kettle sings its song 

28 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

of welcome to the home-coming farmer — 
in such surroundings one may picture Burns. 
All the poet's wit would mock this excellent 
bit of artistry now placarded " The Birth- 
place of Burns.'^ 

This is not to say, however, that the Burns 
Memorial Cottage and Museum at Alloway, 
nor again the Burns Monument a bit farther 
up the road, are failures. As monuments 
they are not so. In the cottage one finds 
many interesting relics; in the little mu- 
seum, just across the garden, there are 
original manuscripts, early editions, and a 
variety of informing items and objects. 
There is Burns's own Bible, inscribed in his 
hand ; there are any number of pictures and 
engravings that add no little to the knowl- 
edge, sum total, of the eager student who 
comes here to browse about and dream. True, 
his fastidious taste may rebel at the commer- 
cial aspect of a post-card and relic table. 
Bisque busts of the poet that mutilate and mar 

29 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

his every feature, as we know them from 
authentic sources, will scarcely appeal to the 
admirer of " The Address to the Deil." 
Miniature reproductions of the Burns Bible 
may fail to attract the seeker after an under- 
standing of the Burns philosophy ; and even 
the more humble worshipers at the shrine 
of the man who penned " The Cotter's Satur- 
day Night," while they may not appreciate 
the incongruity of certain of these estab- 
lished projects for money-getting, will still 
certainly wonder how the spirit of the 
poet who sang those immortal songs, " My 
Highland Lassie, O,'' " Bonnie Dundee," 
and " Auld Lang Syne," could ever rest 
in peace among these modern inventions 
for the improvement of an old '' home " 
site. 

The visitor to Alloway will, of course, 
drive up to the " Brig o' Doon." Here nat- 
ural beauty is again questionably enhanced 
by human instrumentation. One stands 

30 




i^-.-Jk 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

Upon the " auld brig '' and watches the lazy 
Doon water as it creeps below, but one's med- 
itations are sore perplexed by the festive 
array of prosperous-looking tea gardens, 
with their tiny refreshment houses and their 
conveniently disposed resting-benches. As 
a park this is a pleasant retreat; all that is 
picturesque in woodland scenery along a 
riverside is here to be found. Above it, just 
across the road, and carefully enclosed, the 
Burns Monument rests on an eminence. It 
is not a beautiful sculpture, despite its elab- 
orateness; it has not the significance that 
would make it even approach the adequate; 
it has none of the humanity, none of the 
poetic personality, that characterize the 
bronze figure in the square at Ayr. But 
here again is a museum, one interesting relic 
being the Bible Burns gave to Highland 
Mary. The whole place is excellently ar- 
ranged, beautifully managed, but they have 
not succeeded in capturing the inspiration 

31 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

of Burns to inhabit this magnificent edifice, 
these artistic garden spots created to com- 
memorate his fame. 

But there are places in Alloway and Ayr, 
and the vicinity, that recall the poet more 
distinctly. There is the " Auld Alloway 
Kirk,'' for example, along the road a little 
way this side of the monument, and perhaps 
halfway between the birthplace and the old 
" Brig o' Doon." Very ancient is this bit 
of ruin — four gray walls, vine-covered, a 
roofless sanctuary, spirit-haunted, set amid 
dark trees, hemmed in among shadows, the 
central figure in a space of graves and moss- 
encrusted tombstones. It is a quiet spot — 
one can think of it at midnight. Here Tam 
saw the witches dance their strange, weird 
numbers, as 

" The lightnings flash from pole to pole, 
Near and more near the thunders roll, 
When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, 
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze, 

32 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing, 
And loud resounded mirth and dancing. 

Warlocks and witches in a dance: 

Nae cotillon, brent new frae France, 

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 

Put life and mettle in their heels. 

A winnock-bunker in the east. 

There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; 

A tousie tyke, black, grim and large, 

To gie them music was his charge. 

He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl. 

Till roof and rafters a' did dirl — 

Coffins stood round, like open presses. 

That show'd the Dead in their last dresses ; 

And (by some devilish cantraip sleight) 

Each in its cauld hand held a light." 

Alloway Kirk has stood as it stands to- 
day for many and many a long year. One 
needs not any rare stretching of the imagina- 
tion to picture the wine-driven Burns pos- 
sessed of visions in the presence of this grim, 
gray death-house. It is not my purpose here 
to dwell upon those aspects in the character 
of Robert Burns that contributed to his un- 
3 33 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

doing, but one cannot help feeling that the 
'' auld kirk " must have held innumerable 
terrors, not for the sober Burns, but for that 
other creature who has given shame to the 
name and fame of the greatest of Scotch 
singers. 

Up in the town of Ayr there stands " Tarn 
o' Shanter's Inn," and one can scarcely 
" do '' Alloway without having one's atten- 
tion called to it. This is a landmark that 
Tam's fellows in a newer generation prize. 
And only a little distance away from it we 
come upon the " Twa Brigs " that Burns 
made famous. Queer, was it not, that the 
prophecy spoken then should have already 
been fulfilled? The " auld brig " is the orig- 
inal one as it stood in Burns' day ; the boast, 
" I '11 be a brig when ye 're a shapeless 
cairn ! " came true early in the nineteenth 
century, and the bridge that was the " new 
brig" had then to be replaced by one still 
newer. 

34 





m 



\ 



^ 




ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

There may be some who will wonder why 
any one should quibble over the earnest ef- 
forts to make of Alloway a triumph in land- 
scape gardening. I grant you that no one 
has the right to quibble ; it is a case of take 
it or leave it. The Burns trustees have 
doubtless done their best — the best that 
can be done when it comes to preserving the 
birthplace of a poet, to building an enduring 
monument to his fame. Alloway to-day 
typifies the esteem in which the Scotch 
people hold the great poet who voiced their 
thoughts, their aspirations, their every char- 
acteristic, in their own tongue. They have 
done what they could to obliterate the mem- 
ory of the man who failed to live as they 
would like to have had him live, but who 
did, nevertheless, sing in a fashion after 
their own hearts. They love the Burns of 
those tender, touching melodies, which might 
have been composed on the harp of an arch- 
angel; they are desirous of forgetting the 

35 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

Burns who defied the law and the Church 
and who could laugh their most sacred doc- 
trines to scorn in the proud brilliancy of his 
wonderful but riotous intellect. They want 
to think of the tender-hearted Burns, who 
could so whimsically sympathize with the 
field-mouse, the Burns who could cry — no 
matter how inconsistently — 

" Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, 

A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth ! 
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art. 

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth? 

Curse on his perjur'd arts! dissembling smooth! 
Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exil'd? 

Is there no pity, no relenting ruth. 
Points to the parents fondling o'er their child? 
Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction 
wild?" 

They want the Burns who could whisper 
beautiful messages to " Mary in Heaven," 
who could love gently, sing sweetly, preach 
eloquently. And, little by little, the world at 
large is viewing Burns from a new stand- 

36 




The Burns Monument at Alloway 
Taken from the old *'Brig o' Doon "' 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

point. Little by little, we are finding greater 
riches in him. And because there is some- 
thing lovable in this Scotch Byron, some- 
thing fascinating in his wild career, some- 
thing infinitely pathetic in the story of his 
weaknesses, yet something sublime in his 
simple Scotch melodies, something deeper, 
worthy our closer contemplation in his 
"Holy Will/s Prayer," his "Jolly Beggars," 
we seek to find him in his old haunts, the 
man and the poet. And though the conven- 
tionality of the improved Alloway stifles his 
spirit, we may still discern the ghost of him 
haunting the open spaces about the " auld 
kirk " ; we may find it along the Doon banks, 
and in the neighboring wooded places, and 
yet again among the gray stones of Ayr's 
" auld brig," or even lurking in the shadowy 
corners of the now famous Tam o' Shanter's 
Inn. 

We may smile at the unctuous modernity 
that has tried to enshrine a poet's soul in 

37 



ALLOWAY TO-DAY 

sleek, tenderly nurtured gardens and picnic 
places, but before the forces of poetry that 
have rebelled against such housing, and have 
taken up their abode in their own chosen 
places, we are awed. Who knows but that in 
the dead of night Tarn continues to gallop 
madly down the roadway, while the lights 
gleam in the old kirk and the spirits hold 
their revelry amid the shadows? For then 
the tea gardens are closed ; the greedy tour- 
ist is away; once more the spirit of poetry 
rides abroad. 



38 



L 



V 



f 




The Burns Statue, Avr 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 



A SONG OF THE HEATHER 

O, THE heather it is purple, 
And the heather it is white, 

It makes soft the stony places. 
It gives darkened corners light! 

How we love the dainty heather, 
How we seek to know its charm ; 

How we search in nooks well hidden. 
For the spray that keeps from harm. 

We can find it on the hillsides, 

It awaits us in the dell. 
On the mountain, in the valley, 

There 's the music of its bell. 

So we pluck the purple heather. 
But we cherish most the white; 

For our hearts are full of longings 
And we need its boasted might. 



IV 

IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

If there be any place in the world where one 
may feel poetry, it is in the region of Lochs 
Katrine and Lomond, under the shadows 
and in the bypaths of Ben Lomond and Ben 
Venue. There are a hundred and one parts 
of the world in which romance breathes 
through the very atmosphere, but the won- 
drous country that Scott revealed in " The 
Lady of the Lake '' holds a distinctive place 
of its own, for its beauty has an everlasting 
variety; it is verily human in its many 
moods, its changeable and at all times fasci- 
nating aspects. 

The schoolboy or schoolgirl who was once 
exasperated by the eternal necessity for par- 
aphrasing Lady Ellen's love story, and for 

41 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

accomplishing the thankless task of forcing 
Sir Walter's musical meters into a weari- 
some prose, must go to Loch Katrine and 
the Trossachs to learn to appreciate anew 
the beauties of Scott's accurate descriptions 
of the country through which the Hunter 
came on that memorable day when Ellen 
pushed her light skiff over the water and 
carried the stranger to the little lodge on the 
isle. 

It is not my purpose to waste any time 
here on a record of the trip through the lake 
country which gave me my first view of 
Highland wonders. Many of my readers 
will have taken that trip for themselves, and 
a mere itinerary would therefore bore them. 
For those who have not taken it the details 
would have no interest; for those who pro- 
pose taking it I should advise a consultation 
with Baedeker — he is far more familiar with 
train times and the methods of transporta- 
tion than I am. Moreover, the stereotyped 

42 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

route and round of trains and boats and 
coaches has Httle to do with the emotional 
gains of a journey such as this is; and in a 
land so much aHve with poetry and romance, 
and rare natural loveliness, it is the emo- 
tional effect with which one is disposed to 
deal, and over which one would most delight- 
edly linger. 

The way from Balloch to Callender or 
vice versa — and from Callender westward 
was really the route pursued by Fitz-James 
in his famous chase — is a way replete with 
surprises and wonders that are the more 
wonderful in that they are never stationary. 

In the Trossachs one is in fairyland. Na- 
ture has been lavish, but she has also been 
choice. Lakes big and little, waters silvery 
and clear; wild flowers in profusion, but 
artistically mingled; woods dense, but fra- 
grant, and hills high and low; hills purple 
with their mantles of heather, overtopped 
by gaunt, gray rocks that seem to cleave the 

43 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

s]^y — this is the barest outline of the many 
individual features which make up the Tros- 
sachs. Individually they appeal as any bit 
of Nature's careful handiwork must appeal; 
taken together, they are splendid. It is not 
that they satisfy the soul hungering after 
beauty; it is rather that they shatter the 
contentment of a soul too well satisfied with 
the poor artificialities of an increasingly 
potent civilization. If into the primitive 
glories and passions of this marvelous wood- 
land and lakeland, Civilization has intruded 
with audacious calm, this same calm has 
been routed, put to flight and utterly ban- 
ished. This is no part of a smug, twentieth 
century world, trained to self-poise and a 
mastery over physical and mental forces. 
They may set their handsome hotels in the 
very midst of this, enchanted and enchanting 
tract, but their influence is not to be per- 
ceived beyond the radius of a few acres — we 
drop our gold into their greedy maw subcon- 

44 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

sciously as it were, for are we not in dream- 
land, and what has dreamland to do with 
practical considerations ? 

As one jolts over the roadway, now wide, 
now narrow, now straight, or again wind- 
ing; sometimes down a steep, curved hill, 
or up a still steeper and more sharply jagged 
one, it seems as if the centuries had ceased 
to be, as if the age of chivalry, of childlike 
faith and hate and love and passion, were 
once more with us and upon us. Through 
the woods beside us we can almost hear the 
stag go crashing; in imagination's ears we 
hear the hunters, shout on shout. The dogs 
bay as they leap up and down and along the 
hillside; there is a ring of steel, the fall of 
a horse's hoofs, Fitz-James himself seems to 
" ride alone " over the beautiful Brig of 
Turk. This is the heart of a land young with 
the youth of untamed ages; a land of Rob 
Roys, of Highland chieftains, of minstrels 
bent and hoar, their songs and prophecies 

45 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

filling the air with a wild, weird sound as of * 
desolation, or with a loud, triumphant cry 
of victory. Men chase men ; or again, they 
chase the deer ; the trees rise nobly to shield 
them; the leaves rustle gently to cool their 
flushed and sweating brows; the heather 
smooths itself out for a resting-place for 
their wearied limbs and the spent horses that 
carry them — so close to Nature men live 
that they speak with her, think in harmony 
with her, and yield themselves to all her 
tender ministrations with a perfectness of 
trust, a sublime appreciation, the wholeheart- 
edness and unconsciousness of which must 
warm God's heart and make Him glad that 
He established these splendid mountains, 
these wooded, sheltered places, these cool, 
refreshing waters, for their delectation. 

Heaven seems terribly near in the High- 
lands. The blue skies embrace the hills ; the 
soft, rolling clouds here and there mask and 
envelop them. Light rains sprinkle the ten- 

46 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

iderly green foliage, as if the Gardener of 
all were lovingly caring for the outward as- 
pect of His garden, and were keeping it 
bright and fresh by an abundance of clear 
sunshine and frequent, gentle showers. 

Scott has all the poet's vision in picturing 
those regions that appealed to his romantic 
nature. He knew the glories of a sunset in 
the lake country ; he knew the awe-inspiring 
forces of a thunder shower. 

*'Each purple peak, each flinty spire; 
Was bathed in floods of living fire.'' 

But one must go high in the Trossachs to 
view a sunset; for down in the deep ravines 
it is true that " not a setting beam could 
glow '' ; " where twined the path in shadow 
hid,'' all is cool, damp, strangely silent and 
sweetly soothing. Here may one wander 
and meditate, for here God has set His 
temple and His sanctuary, and every tree 
bends with a humble grace to acknowledge 

47 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

the forces that so quietly yet so insistently 
prevail. This is the garden of souls, bul- 
warked about by stately hills. The spirit, 
refreshed and restrengthened, may climb 
upward to the summits and meet the sun face 
to face, for these are the Scotch Sinais, and 
the glory of the God of Moses sweeps them 
with refulgent gleam. 

There is a richness of beauty in Scott's de- 
scription of a Trossach glen as he wrote it 
for " The Lady of the Lake ": 

" Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild, 
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child. 
Here eglantine embalm'd the air, 
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; 
The primrose pale and violet flower, 
Found in each cliff a narrow bower ; 
Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side. 
Emblems of punishment and pride, 
Group'd their dark hues with every stain 
The weather-beaten crags retain. 
With boughs that quaked at every breath, 
Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; 

48 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

Aloft, the ash and warrior oak 
Cast anchor in the rifted rock; 
And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung 
His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung, 
Where seemed the cHffs to meet on high, 
His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky. 
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced. 
Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced, 
The wanderer's eye could barely view 
The summer heaven's delicious blue ; 
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
The scenery of a fairy dream." 

It is not given every one to " issue from 
the glen/' to gain " an airy point '' and see 

" Where, gleaming with the setting sun, 
One burnished sheet of living gold. 
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll'd," 

but all who come forth from amid the 
mingled grandeurs and more intimately 
charming places of the Trossachs will pause 
spellbound on the shores of Loch Katrine. 
This is romance incarnate, and one longs to 
4 49 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

ride over its waters, singing. All around 
rise the hills — bare hills, hills heather-clad, 
hills grown over with thick forest mazes, 
hills reflected in the clear waters of the lake, 
reflections intermingled with islands large 
and small, islands all wooded and in their 
turn giving to the mirroring waters pictures 
as wild as they are weird, pictures full of 
color and light and the ravishing power of 
beautiful form. 

Listen to the winding of the Hunter's 
horn, as on his little promontory he medi- 
tates and wishes and longs. And then in 
answer comes the maiden; a chieftain's 
daughter she, who carries the stranger to 
her lakeland isle, that isle which was 

" So close with copsewood bound, 
Nor track nor pathway might declare 
That human foot frequented there. 
Until the mountain maiden show'd 
A clambering unsuspected road, 
That winded through the tangled screen, 
And opened on a narrow green, 
50 




H 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

Where weeping birch and willow round 
With their long fibers swept the ground. 
Here, for retreat in dangerous hour, 
Some chief had framed a rustic bower." 

Ellen's Isle appears just as Scott described 
it ; a small island, densely wooded, its banks 
high set and no landing-place visible. Its 
outer appearance breathes mystery, yet sug- 
gests romance, and that romance the Scotch 
poet has given it. 

The way between Loch Katrine and Loch 
Lomond, or, more accurately, the way be- 
tween Inversnaid and Stranachlacher, is in- 
deed the way of the mountains. My own 
experience on this road was one to remem- 
ber. Most persons going through the lake 
country hope for or wait for a clear day, and 
they describe a clear day as being one of un- 
variegated sunshine. Those who have had 
a rainy day for the trip look back upon it as 
a somewhat doubtfully delightful journey, 
personal discomfort contributing to the dis- 

51 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

appointment of dull skies, mists that obscure 
and mud that predominates. There is, how- 
ever, an in-between kind of day that is quite 
usual in the Highlands, and my day was one 
of these. Every twenty minutes it showered 
— a cool, refreshing, wetting, but not en- 
during, shower. After each shower the Sun 
had a frolic — in fact, I am sure that on 
such a day the Sun enjoys a most benignant 
humor. And such a humor adds a wonder- 
ful charm to the Highlands. For one mo- 
ment dense purple mists would veil the faces 
of the mountains, heavy clouds would roll 
low over the hills ; then suddenly the clouds 
would fade, the mists would scatter, the sky 
would glow with gold and gleam with blue 
and silver patches. Every green blade would 
sparkle with a raindrop; the trees would 
glisten emerald under the soft sun-sheen; 
along the sides of the high, long-sloped 
mountains, the rainbow would lay its curved 
line of gorgeous colors with an abandonment 

52 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

and a grace that enraptured. Here was Na- 
ture in one of her grand moods, not a gran- 
deur that overpowers, but a grandeur that 
exalts. 

The same spirit prevailed on Loch Lo- 
mond. The scene here is less brilliant; the 
great mountains heave their shoulders high ; 
their boulders project and over fold like the 
mighty muscles of giants ; their shadows are 
somber, the sunshine is less inspiring, the 
weight of massive rocks oppresses even while 
it uplifts the spirit. Loch Lomond is expan- 
sive, and its scenery is on a more magnificent 
scale than that of Loch Katrine. It has 
more of the awe-inspiring and less of the 
sympathetic, the touching. One is moved to 
wonder with a far-away wonder; there is 
not that immediate incentive to aspiration, 
and there is far less of intimate inspiration. 
Nature seems to guard here the passes into 
some wonder-world; but one hesitates to 
desire a watchword that will open the passes, 

53 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

lest instead of enchanting garden spots, in- 
stead of the chivalrous lords and beautiful 
ladies of a bygone romantic day, one may 
find beyond those mountains gray giants' 
castles, monsters that devour, and the deso- 
lateness of dungeons dreary and dark. 

These are, however, but the dreams that 
the Scotch lakes and the Scotch mountains 
engender. They are visions worth seeing; 
they are feelings worth experiencing. If 
you do not know yourself closer to the things 
of Heaven when you end your day in the 
Scotch lake country, you have missed some- 
thing in soul culture; if you have not seen 
visions, have not dreamed dreams, you have 
lost a delightful bit of imaginative revelling, 
an experience which, if you do not get it 
here, you will not be likely to get anywhere. 
For the man or woman who has not re- 
sponded to the exalted spirit of these moun- 
tain heights; who has not drunk of the in- 
spiration of these clear and sparkling waters ; 

54 



IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY 

whose soul has not reached the purple mists 
that encircle the summits, or has not stooped 
to commune with the humblest wild flowers 
of the deepest glen, that man or that woman 
is like the man 

"... that hath no music in himself, 

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds." 



55 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 



EDINBURGH CASTLE BY MOONLIGHT 

High on its hill, above the town that sleeps, 

The castle stands, all silent and all dark; 

Beneath it, in the green and fragrant park, 
Where Princes Street a new tradition keeps. 
Pedestrians stand at gaze and scan the steeps, 

The castle's mighty bulwarks to remark; 

Where once a lover, hungry for a lark, 
Scaled desperate heights by bounds and daring leaps. 

Above that pile, historic, dark, and still, 

The full moon spreads its glowing, silvery light, 
Bright gleams the shadows touch with glisten- 
ing threads 
Where now the ghost of Mary softly treads. 
Each turret wears a strand of shining white, 
Enhaloed by moon-luster rests the hill. 



V 

EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

Picturesque is probably the most apt word 
with which to describe Edinburgh, and it 
would seem that to no city in the British 
Isles could this term be more appropri- 
ately applied. Even as Rome, this is a city 
set upon seven hills, and, like Rome, the spirit 
of all things ancient seems to inhabit these 
monumented crests. 

To attempt to describe this quaint old 
Scottish town by recording any particular 
number or set of facts were as futile as the 
efforts of all artists of all ages to add the 
apparently lost arms to the incomparable 
Venus of Milo; while to brush away the 
misty but ornate cobwebs that centuries of 

59 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

history-making have woven about storied 
ruins and quaint architectural groups would 
be a task unworthy an appreciative student's 
pen, an artistic crime that only one foolhardy 
would dare to think of committing. 

My first sight of Edinburgh was at night, 
and even as we climbed the innumerable 
steps leading up from Waverley Station to 
the streets of the old town, I sensed that at- 
mosphere of historic and poetic sanctity with 
which Edinburgh is endowed. Not that the 
first scene upon which we came had anything 
of sacredness or the awe-inspiring to hallow 
it, for the " Old Town '' at ten o'clock in the 
evening is more rife with evil even than most 
cities are, and the poverty-stricken, drink- 
ing, gambling, pickpocketing crew of men 
and women who make the Canongate re- 
gion, for instance, unsafe for respectable 
wayfarers, presents as unsavory if as piti- 
able a sight as one can well imagine. For 
Edinburgh's poor are desperately poor ; and 

60 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

Edinburgh's slums can scarcely be matched 
for their sorrow and suffering, even as they 
cannot be matched for their quaintness, 
which is incongruous. For here is a world 
within a world, a world above a world; yes, 
and a world beneath a world. Just a few 
steps through a narrow passageway that has 
its entrance on the High Street, and you 
come into a court on three sides of which rise 
narrow, very high, grimy, dingy, flat-faced, 
myriad-windowed buildings, the lands — in 
our language, the tenements — of Edin- 
burgh. Extremely old, extremely dirty, ex- 
tremely tragical are these ancient buildings, 
surviving from a day when the rapid growth 
of population in a restricted area demanded 
that men build up and up, story upon story, 
since they had not the space for expansion. 
Out on the High Street life moves on in a 
more or less ordinary stream; within. Trag- 
edy and Comedy brush elbows as they pass 
up and down the steep stairways, and in and 

6i 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

out of the filthy, mean Httle rooms, in which, 
as Stevenson says, now one is dying, or 
again one is being born — in the very midst 
of the fumes of bad Hquor, and to the sound 
of the maudHn whines of the many who 
drink and loaf and fight. And yet, just on 
the other side of the dirty, half-tottering, 
semi-mysterious lands, the Princes Street 
Gardens, when we saw them, lay in their 
beautiful hollow, fragrant with flowers, 
dainty in garments of green, rich in refresh- 
ment and rest for the eyes of the fashionable 
throngs that pass them lightly by on their 
way to and from the handsome shops and 
inviting bookstores that line the opposite 
side of the broad thoroughfare. But, with 
it all^ — the poverty, the dirt, the horrible 
struggle for existence — the inhabitant of 
the Edinburgh tenement house has one item 
of wealth of which no one can deprive him. 
To quote Stevenson, who has expressed it 
as few others could : 

62 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

*' The poor man may roost high in the center of 
Edinburgh, and yet have a peep of green country 
from his window ; he shall see the quarters of the 
well-to-do fathoms underneath, with their broad 
squares and their gardens; he shall have nothing 
overhead but a few spires, the stone topgallants of 
the city ; and perhaps the wind may reach him with 
a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the sea or 
of flowering lilacs in the Spring." 

And in the very chamber where now 
Drunkenness holds riot, and Starvation 
stands at guard, there may once have cHnked 
the glasses of the noble, and have sounded 
the silvery laughter of fine ladies — for once 
on a time these strange, steep apartment 
places were the dwelling houses of the 
wealthy, and into these dreary courts the 
chariots of kings and courtiers were wont 
to be driven with a fine flourish and a blare 
of horns. Nowadays, the more fortunate of 
the Edinburgh townspeople have a " New 
Town '' of their own, but tradition, and the 
glories of association with a great historic 

63 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

past, vest themselves in these meaner quar- 
ters, under the shadow of St. Giles' great 
lantern tower and in the clustering heaps of 
stone and plaster that make up the region 
round about Holyrood. 

It was in one of the lands off the High 
Street, now gloomy and dark, that Dr. John- 
son roomed with Boswell during his stay in 
Edinburgh, and certain windows are still 
pointed out as belonging to the particular 
chamber occupied by the great man and his 
faithful biographer. 

Edinburgh is unusually rich in historic 
and literary associations. They begin at the 
castle, which dominates the city from its 
place on a great hill at the top of the High 
Street, and they continue on down, past St. 
Giles and the famous Tron Church; past 
the Heart of Midlothian — a heart outlined 
in cobble-stones set in the street just above 
St. Giles, and marking the doorway of the 
ancient Tolbooth, celebrated in Scotf s novel, 

64 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

" The Heart of Midlothian '' — and on into 
the Canongate, at the head of which stands 
a quaint, old, irregularly constructed house, 
its staircase leading from the street to the 
second floor, its lower floor now comprising 
a picturesque bookshop stocked with queer, 
aged, discolored engravings and musty, fine- 
typed books of a historic period. In this 
house, supposedly, John Knox, the hammer- 
tongued preacher of Queen Mary's day, lived 
and died, and from a window looking out 
over the High Street he is supposed to have 
hurled his prophecies and admonitions and 
denunciations to the gaping crowds below. 
A little lower down, the Canongate church- 
yard shelters the remains of Adam Smith, 
author of "The Wealth of Nations,'' and 
the murdered Rizzio, and gives a place to 
the grave of that unhonored Scotch poet, 
Fergusson, to whom Robert Burns owed so 
much that in later years he erected a monu- 
ment here in token of his appreciation. 
5 65 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

Here, also, stands the Canongate Tolbooth, 
with its ironic inscription on the old clock 
that extends above the street — Sic itur ad 
astra- — pointing the way to Heaven for 
those who were hanged from this exten- 
sion. And now at last we see Holyrood 
Palace, quite at the foot of the long hill 
that had its summit at the castle. But we 
came down that hill just a little precipi- 
tately — let us retrace our steps for a word 
about the castle and St. Giles ere we go into 
Holyrood. 

All that is romantic in the wars and tri- 
umphs, even in the defeats, of the Scottish 
nation, has its place in Edinburgh's gray old 
castle. I have not the time, nor again the 
space, for details with which to describe this 
grim, gaunt pile — perhaps you would not 
thank me for such a description, as it is by 
no means inaccessible — but from the mo- 
ment one takes the first step up the broad 
esplanade that leads to the entrance gate, 

66 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

one is conscious of an atmosphere fraught 
with the thrill of the deeds of brave men, and 
the horror of the deeds of wicked men. For 
in this castle the young Douglases were 
bidden to a banquet, and were there mur- 
dered; in this castle Queen Mary gave birth 
to the son who was to join the forces of the 
Scots and the English; and in this castle 
the Duke of Argyll suffered his long im- 
prisonment. Here we see displayed the 
Regalia of Scotland, symbol of a power for- 
ever gone; and here, in a humble chamber, 
exalted by the spirit of a queen's prayer 
graved on its impaneled wall, a king first 
saw the light, while from a little window 
he was lowered to a waiting group below, 
who carried him away to Stirling that he 
might be baptized in his mother's faith ^ — 
the faith of Rome. Once, this castle was 
taken by a band of fifty men, who climbed 
the ramparts under the guidance of a youth 
who knew the way because by night he was 

67 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

wont to visit his sweetheart far down in the 
Old Town. To-day one looks over those 
same ramparts and sees spread below the 
magnificent Princes Street Gardens. But 
in that day a river flowed through the hol- 
low, the bed of which has given place for 
the railroad which now leads into Waverley 
Station. It is a sight to stir the most prosaic 
mind to stand on Castlehill, to stand by the 
side of Mons Meg, the great and famous 
cannon, and look out over and beyond Edin- 
burgh. There are few views in the world to 
surpass this, embracing as it does the high 
Arthur's Seat on the one hand; the stretch 
of the sea, with its glimpses of white sails; 
the Pentland Hills in the distance, and the 
irregular up-hill-and-down-dale town of 
Edinburgh, lying under a clear sky, with a 
faint, fine mist over the face of the scattered 
peaks and a flood of sunshine in the valley 
of the Gardens. High houses, low houses, 
church spires in countless numbers — the 
68 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

city of a beautiful, unhappy queen; the city 
of a mighty, stentorian-voiced reformer ; the 
city of poets and romancers, and of the doers 
of deeds that are recorded in the annals of 
a nation that has played an important part 
in the world's history. After the inspiration 
of this view, with its burden of thoughts and 
memories, go into St. Margaret's Chapel, 
that tiny stone shrine placed there more than 
eight hundred years ago, which gave a 
refuge to the good Queen Margaret, a holy 
woman, who loved her country and her God, 
and served both faithfully and well. The 
chapel is a place for meditation, for a mo- 
ment's respite for the soul before one goes 
back into the hum and color of the castle's 
military life; for to-day the castle is used 
as a barracks, and a Highland regiment, 
picturesque in its dress uniform of cream- 
colored kilts and scarfs of the plaid, keeps 
things in a state of movement and rush dis- 
tinctively modern. From this atmosphere 

69 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

one wanders on to St. Giles, and, in the 
sweetness of its solemn silence, ponders over 
many of the ideas engendered by the survey 
of the town thus far. Suddenly, upon the 
hush that fills the lofty, high-arched spaces 
of the nave, falls the low rumble of first 
organ notes, growing sweeter and more clear 
as they progress. 

To music marched the warriors into battle, 
warriors now dust under these monuments 
of stone, in these magnificent sarcophagi 
reared to commemorate their achievements. 
To the sound of music thronged the crowds 
to hear John Knox thunder from the pulpit, 
and in effigy of marble stands the preacher 
now, characteristic as to expression and 
pose. To the organ's tense vibrations quiver 
the silken fragments of the once glorious 
flags that to-day hang in dejected groups 
about the tall and fluted pillars of the church 
which honors their heroic bearers and the 
houses for which they once so proudly stood. 

70 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

Scotland has been generous in the monu- 
ments placed in St. Giles, down to her more 
recent acquisitions, including the now famil- 
iar tablet which our own Saint Gaudens 
carved into a likeness of her poet-romancer, 
Robert Louis Stevenson. 

But one lingers in the old cathedral as 
one may or will ; for the present it requires 
that we move on, once more down the High 
Street and through Canongate, even into 
the Palace of Holyrood. This is the place to 
which the spirits of the queen and Darnley 
and Rizzio and the four Marys are wont to 
return, for in the rooms of this palace Darn- 
ley and Mary lived their briefest of brief 
romances, and here the Italian secretary was 
brutally murdered. The palace has become 
a mere show place ; one is piloted through a 
quick succession of rooms that must be peo- 
pled instantaneously, if one would experi- 
ence the romantic emotion that they by right 
and reason should inspire. It needs an 

71 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

after-thinking really to get Holyrood into a 
historic perspective, and it needs a quiet 
leisure in the gloom of the broken Abbey. 
Here, as at Melrose, there is the feeling of 
the sacredness of age, of ruin evolved from 
glory through the agency of Time. So close 
to the haunts of sin stood this sanctuary; 
in its holy precincts knelt a queen whose 
weakness was only equaled by the intensity 
of her suffering, whose marvelous beauty 
gave often the cause for her sin. Yet the 
tragedy of the farce enacted at Fotheringay 
would almost blot out all save the sorrow, 
and one may bow the head in Holyrood Ab- 
bey, under the blue sky that roofs its shat- 
tered columns, and feel a thrill of sympathy, 
a wonderful depth of pity for this most un- 
fortunate of queens. 

Up from the valley in which Holyrood 
rests it is not a long walk to Calton Hill, 
the National Monument on the top of which 
— a Parthenon-like structure of pillars that 

72 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

has never been completed — has given Edin- 
burgh the title of '' modern Athens/' so 
much like the Acropolis at Athens does it 
look from a distance. 

Calton Hill is a queer mixture of monu- 
ments and public buildings, which crown its 
heights and rest upon its slopes. Here 
is the prison, the Royal High School, a 
monument to Burns, one to Dugald Stewart, 
and one to Lord Nelson. The hill rises di- 
rectly opposite the castle, at the other side 
of the town, and each day, an hour after the 
sun crosses the meridian of Greenwich, a 
shot is fired from the castle and a ball falls 
from the top of the Nelson monument. The 
architecture on Calton Hill is in execrable 
taste, while the monuments are disposed in 
the least appropriate way possible. It is 
said that the National Monument was never 
finished because the commissioners enjoyed 
too many elaborate repasts paid for from the 
funds, and to-day the structure is dubbed by 

73 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

the people of Edinburgh the " National 
Disgrace/' 

The road from Calton Hill leads down to 
Princes Street, and here one has a view of 
the handsome Scott monument, the most 
elaborate thing of its kind in the world. 
The carvings on it are exquisite, portraying 
various characters from the novels, and an 
excellent presentment of the poet and story- 
writer, in white marble, rests under the 
canopy. 

The principal sights of Edinburgh can be 
seen in a day; but an indefinite period of 
time would scarcely exhaust its possibilities 
along the line of historic association and 
literary landmarks. Through Scott's novels 
alone one may trace a long line of interest- 
ing places which gave the descriptive data 
or the historic episodes for some one of the 
romances. Scott was born in Edinburgh, 
lived there part of his life, and visited the 
town frequently in times he did not live 

74 




X 






EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

there. In Parliament Close, by St. Giles, he 
sat at the bar of law, and, in his place 
there, wrote many chapters of the Waverley 
Novels as the judicial proceedings went 
monotonously on. In Advocates' Court he 
found the original for the lawyer in " Guy 
Mannering," and down in the heart of the 
old town he went to seek the setting for the 
Porteous riots described in " The Heart of 
Midlothian." Just outside the town there 
still stands a quaint cottage, known as Davie 
Deans' Cottage, and down by Holyrood one 
pauses to step into the Whitehorse Close, 
pictured so minutely in '^ Waverley." It 
was in Paul's Work that the Ballantyne 
Press was first located, and an old wooden 
press is still shown there, on which portions 
of the Waverley Novels were printed. 

Edinburgh is sacred to the fame of Allan 
Ramsay, author of " The Gentle Shepherd " ; 
to the novelist, Tobias Smollett; to Drum- 
mond of Hawthornden, whom Ben Jonson 

75 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

visited; to David Hume, to John Gay, to 
Robert Burns; to Lockhart, son-in-law and 
biographer of Scott; to Francis Jeffrey, of 
the Edinburgh Review, that terrible organ 
of criticism; to Sydney Smith; to the poet, 
Thomas Campbell; and to Thomas Carlyle, 
Robert Louis Stevenson, and Dr. John 
Brown, creator of " Rab." Moreover, it is 
filled with legends and historic tales sur- 
rounding the life and tragic death of Mary, 
Queen of Scots; and always will the spirit 
of John Knox seem to preside over much of 
the old town. There is one place to which 
I ought to call especial attention. We were 
taken down a long line of steps from the 
upper town to a lower portion — for Edin- 
burgh's hills necessitate much step-climbing 
as one walks through the city — to the old 
Magdalene Chapel, the oldest church in 
Edinburgh, more than three hundred and 
fifty years of age. It belongs to the Corpo- 
ration of Hammermen, and it is a tiny, 

76 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

quaint place, surmounted by a beautiful 
spire. A silver bell hangs in the belfry, and 
our guide climbed up the steep stairs to pull 
the rope. The chime was as clear and sweet 
as that of any bell I have heard. The glass 
in the windows of Magdalene Chapel belongs 
to pre-Reformation days, and is the only 
painted glass now left in Scotland. In this 
chapel John Knox preached, and the pulpit 
he used is preserved there. The place is a 
keystone, so to speak, in the " Old Town," 
before the " New Town," with its broad, 
beautiful terraces, its mansions, its hospi- 
tals, and its university buildings came into 
being. And those who would know historic 
Edinburgh, the Edinburgh that is quaint, 
even as it is so essentially picturesque, must 
know these steep, narrow streets, deep below 
the main thoroughfares, walled by the seven, 
eight, and ten story buildings that may be 
only four stories high on their opposite sides, 
and reached by long flights of steps of stone 

77 



EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE 

or wood that connect the city below with the 
city above. 

My last good look at Edinburgh was late 
at night, later even than the time of my ar- 
rival. And it was a view decidedly different ; 
not a view of Canongate, but one of the 
Princes Street Gardens, just below the castle. 
It was moonlight, and a full moon rested just 
over the castle's round tower. The fortress 
was all in shadow, just the merest outline of 
a black mass being discernible. The gar- 
dens below were lighted, and Princes Street 
was thronged with an up-to-date, enjoyment- 
seeking crowd. So the new marched under 
the shadow of the old ; and the ancient cita- 
del, serene in its now secured repose, but 
weighted with memories that cannot be ban- 
ished, seemed like a great giant, sitting in 
melancholy reflection, in the face of a lively 
panorama in which he could take or have 
no part. 



78 



MELROSE ABBEY AND 
ABBOTSFORD 



MELROSE IN RUINS 

Where once the light all rainbow-tinted fell 

Through Melrose windows splendid, lofty-arched, 
Beneath which dark-cowled monkish figures 
marched 

As conned they o'er their beads their prayers to tell : 

Like wraiths that in ethereal regions dwell, 
The ghostly twilight of a later day 
Those shadows gaunt and dim now drives away, 

And Beauty yields its glow to Ruin's spell. 

For broken now those sculptured blossoms rare, 
That once made Melrose cloisters garden fair; 
Dust-scattered now those forms severely grave. 
Whose footsteps echoed through the nave; 
E'en tattered are the emblems heroes bore. 
They fly to stimulating winds no more. 



VI 

MELROSE ABBEY AND 
ABBOTSFORD 

Abbotsford is among those literary land- 
marks that afford excuses for the American 
traveler abroad who needs a " beaten way," 
since in going across the Atlantic at all he 
must, American-wise, so plan his journey 
that he shall finish it with the comfortable 
feeling of having ''invested" something; 
moreover, of having realized generously on 
the investment. 

The happy day may come when we shall 
go abroad — I am speaking generally, not 
specifically — without aim, without purpose, 
without planning; just to absorb whatever 
comes our way and to drink in whatever of 
inspiration those fair and pregnant scenes 
may carry to us. But we have not yet ceased 
6 8i 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

to be " orthodox/' or middle-classedly re- 
spectable, in our travels — hence the ease 
with which our neighbors over the waters 
make profit of our strenuous efforts to " do " 
everything in sight. 

The less conventional tourist may well 
hesitate before journeying down to Abbots- 
ford, but, having hesitated, he is committed 
to a decision in the affirmative. It then be- 
comes but a question of getting there. And 
the canny Scotsman knows too thoroughly 
the propensities of his American brothers 
to let slip this excellent opportunity for turn- 
ing an honest penny. Wherefore, whether 
one starts from England, and the south, or 
comes by way of Edinburgh, as we did, the 
station at Melrose is conveniently equipped 
with several varieties of vehicle, in which,, 
for a modest fee, one may jolt down hill and 
up dale and around corners to that low-lying,; 
wide-rambling, much-turreted, and bedecked 
mansion which Sir Walter Scott, with a taste 

82 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

more extravagant than artistic, and an ambi- 
tion far in excess of most literary men's 
bank balances, erected as a pedestal on which 
to rear that long and mighty line of Scotts 
of which he dreamed, but that remains 
principally as a monument to his success as 
a novelist and to his unique and wonderful 
ability in effecting the collection of valuable 
historical trophies. 

It is not necessary here to tell the story of 
Abbotsford — it has been sufficiently talked 
about. Indeed, one wonders if it really is 
not superfluous to describe in any way this 
great and remarkable pile which to-day is, 
first of all, the official residence of Scott's 
great-granddaughter, who, for the sake of 
the curious, the venerating, the honestly 
appreciative, has permitted this " pride " of 
her illustrious ancestor to remain accessible 
to a vast and miscellaneous public, some of 
whom weep and others of whom smile when 
brought thus face to face with the actual 

83 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

belongings, the immediate home and sur- 
roundings, of Scotland's most significant 
genius. 

The Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott is herself 
an author of whom Sir Walter, were he 
alive, would not need to be ashamed. She 
has done more than one splendid thing in 
the way of descriptive and historical writ- 
ing, her " Tragedy of Fotheringay " being 
the most accurate and complete account we 
have had of the travesty of a trial which 
sent Mary, Queen of the Scots, to the block. 

But this is not a review of the literary 
achievements of the present owner of Ab- 
botsford. For, lightness aside, Abbotsford 
has one merit as a literary landmark that is 
not shared by most such relics. It is still 
too modern to have acquired anything of the 
legendary, and the care with which it has 
been preserved has kept away the incon- 
gruities of restoration. One may laugh 
heartily at being ushered into a basement 

84 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

room to inspect picture post-cards, photo- 
graphs, and souvenir editions, on the heels 
of which one is requested to purchase a 
ticket of admission for the rooms upstairs; 
but one ceases to laugh when at length the 
study door is thrown open and one is pro- 
jected suddenly into the very holy of holies, 
the place in which the high priest of Scottish 
Border Minstrelsy performed his most sacred 
rites. It matters little that the furnishings 
are rich, unique, endowed, many of them, 
with historic interest of an unusual degree; 
what does matter is that here Scott, the poet 
and novelist, worked and lived; here he 
gathered about him his treasures; here he 
planned and dreamed, and made many of 
the dreams come true. I don't remember 
what I saw in that study at Abbotsford — 
save that I recall wondering at the height 
of the desk as compared with the height of 
the chair that stood before it, and was the 
chair which Scott himself used in writing 

85 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

— I don't care to remember the details of 
these furnishings, since there are always 
Baedeker and the photographs to tell me if 
I need to refer to them concretely; what I 
do remember is the feeling of the presence 
of a genius whose spirit cannot be separated 
from this temple which it created for itself. 
This was a presence to discover which I 
needed neither guide nor guide-book. That 
something in the personality of Walter Scott 
which quickens the sympathies and touches 
the heart — the lovableness of the man's 
personality — that is what one finds in these 
rooms at Abbotsford. And in the study, 
where a master mind wove cunningly those 
wondrous lengths of bright-hued, grimly 
shadowed, bounteously figured and more 
bounteously backgrounded tapestries, in that 
study the Genius of Imagination and the 
Spirit of Romance stand like twin angels 
with flaming swords to guard against the 
profanation of a sanctuary. 

86 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

In the library one senses the kindly, hos- 
pitable spirit of the Abbotsford laird; the 
geniality, the courteous grace of one who 
welcomes friends to partake of his home 
joys. From a niche in the wall the gently 
humorous eyes of the poet and story-teller 
smile in greeting to the visitor; the books 
bear witness to the wealth of history and 
legend that went to make up that noble 
array of romancing art in the concrete form 
of a long line of novels. At every point one 
meets some token that either suggested or 
enhanced or confirmed a well-known story, 
and one is made greatly to wonder when the 
treasures of the glass-covered table by the 
window are conned over, name by name. 
The crucifix that the most unfortunate Scot- 
tish queen carried through her final ordeal; 
Napoleon's own blotting-pad and book, taken 
after Waterloo ; Flora MacDonald's pocket- 
book; and a tumbler from which Bobbie 
Burns had drunk a frequent dram, — these 

87 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

are all symbols of the master's skill in creat- 
ing romance about tangible objects, and are 
furthermore emblems of his passion for col- 
lecting interesting relics. 

From the library one passes on into the 
drawing-room, where the Raeburn portrait 
of Scott has a delightful reminiscence in its 
youthful whimsicality, in its tender, implied 
caress for the big, beautiful deer-hound; 
and the portrait of Abbotsford's present mis- 
tress on another wall calls for a moment's 
attention. From the library window we had 
had an inspiring landscape view — the long 
line of hills in the distance; nearer, the his- 
toric Tweed, a thin line of silver, separated 
from the house only by the broad lawns ; and 
then again, a connecting link in the person 
of Mrs. Maxwell-Scott's young son, great- 
great-grandson of Sir Walter, who played 
a heated game of tennis just above the 
Tweed's green bank. 

The Armory — considered to hold the 
88 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

finest private collectioji of its kind in the 
world — adjoins the drawing-room. Here 
Rob Roy's gun, Napoleon's pistol, Prince 
Charlie's hunting knives, the keys of the old 
Tolbooth in Edinburgh, and a variety of 
ancient instruments of torture, make up a 
remarkable display of warlike instruments, 
every one of which probably figures in some 
bloody or otherwise exciting scene of the 
novels. 

There is a picture in the Armory that 
has a story which is worth repeating. It 
is called " Scott of Harden's Introduction 
to Muckle-mou'ed Meg." Scott of Harden, 
so the legend goes, was found poaching on 
the estate of Sir Gideon Murray at Elibank. 
He was sentenced to be hanged, but was 
reprieved on the condition that he marry the 
Murray's daughter, an ill-visaged young 
woman popularly designated as " Muckle- 
mou'ed Meg." Young Scott found it hard 
to accede to these terms, though he finally 

89 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

did so, and this same " Meg '' thus be- 
came one of Sir Waher Scott's ancestors. 
Scott himself tells the story humorously in 
his " Border Antiquities/' the tale losing 
nothing in the telling, you may rest 
assured. 

All that money, forethought, and loving, 
diligent care could do has been done for 
Abbotsford, from the moment Scott pur- 
chased unpromising Cartleyhole till to-day, 
when beautifully arranged gardens testify 
to the landscape gardener's skill, and the 
smooth velvet of broad lawns bespeaks 
generations of constant cherishing. 

And yet, with all its hosts of memories, 
its genius-haunted spots, it is not at Abbots- 
ford that we look for the most endearing 
aspects of Scott's personality. Scott the 
poet dwells elsewhere in greater force — at 
Melrose, in that wonderfully beautiful, rarely 
inspiring heap of broken stones and majestic 
columns, whose 

90 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

"... pillars with cluster'd shafts so trim, 
With base and with capital flourished around, 
Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound.'' 

I did not see " fair Melrose '' " by the pale 
moonlight." I am satisfied with Scott's de- 
scription of its wonders. In the dying 
daylight of a chilly, rainy afternoon, sub- 
sequent to a few hours at Abbotsford, the 
Melrose ruins breathed a pathos, wore a 
desolateness of habit, that told the tragedy 
of the centuries with an eloquence that no 
moonlight, however ravishing, could achieve. 
The ghosts were there — pale ghosts, shiver- 
ing in the cold air, against which the roofless 
abbey was powerless to protect them ; on the 
grave of the heart of the Bruce the fine, soft 
rain dropped with a dreary pitter-patter, and 
the great east window cast somber shadows 
against a dull, gray sky. 

Of all the picturesque and beautiful ruins 
that figure in the landscapes of Scotland and 
England, there is nothing that quite equals 

91 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

Melrose. Architecturally it is perfect — a 
monument builded by loving hands, in that 
happy, bygone age when time was not money 
and money was insignificant anyway ; when 
men loved God and worked their very souls' 
essence into the stones they chipped and 
hammered and carved. The windows at 
Melrose are superb without stained glass, 
for the frames for the glasses are exqui- 
sitely fashioned, with a pattern so fine, so 
wondrously and subtly artistic, that the light 
pouring in through the open spaces discovers 
ever new glories to the eye. And so it is with 
every portion of the standing stones — the 
mighty, fiiuted columns, the graceful, wide- 
sweeping arches, the thousands and thou- 
sands of tiny yet marvelous details with 
which every fragment visible is enriched. 
No more 

" Spreading herbs and flowerets bright 
Glisten with the dew of night;" 



92 




h 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

but it still remains true that 

'' Nor herb nor floweret glistened there, 

But was carved in the cloisters' arches as fair." 

Years of ruin and decay have despoiled 
that wondrous garden of the monks, but the 
herbs and flowerets carven in the cloisters' 
arches cannot be destroyed. Bit by bit they 
may break and wear away, but only w^hen 
long ages have passed will they be finally 
obliterated. 

One treads softly at Melrose Abbey. Out- 
side the walls disappointment seizes the visi- 
tor who comes for the first time. For, close 
in against the ruins, enterprising moderners 
have builded a hotel, and this, with the 
guide's cottage and surrounding buildings 
which have encroached on the abbey grounds, 
shuts off the ruins from the town side. In 
consequence the wide, open spaces that would 
enhance the beauty of the rare old pile, and 
would give it an appropriate setting, as it 
were, are missing, and one enters at a point 

93 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

where commercialism seems to be throttling 
ancient art. But once inside the gate that 
forms the entrance, hotels and whatever else 
of material moment vanish away, one stands 
awe-stricken, meditative, hushed, in the dim, 
green squares of lawn that form the abbey's 
present interior. And awe-stricken one re- 
mains; wandering dreamily among those 
silent graves, and amid the shadows, the 
magnificence of a great historic Past rises 
up to confront one, demanding that a listen- 
ing ear give heed to its insistent call. Low 
under the eastern window, where once the 
high altar stood, a pile of rude stones marks 
the spot in which the heart of the Bruce has 
reposed these long, long years. Not far 
away, the grave of Michael Scott claims all 
the imagination of any one who loves the 
magnificent " Lay," for here, to this grave, 
the " Monk of St. Mary s aisle " led Delo- 
raine when, on that dreadful night,^ the war- 
rior brave rode from Branksome to obtain the 

94 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

book of magic that lay in the wizard's grave. 
The old guide at Melrose knows the story 
well, and loves Scott's version of it. He 
stood with us beside that grave and recited it 
for us — recited it in a voice that vibrated 
deep and full through the solemn quiet of 
the lofty arches under a still sky. 

" Lo, Warrior ! now the Cross of red 
Points to the grave of the mighty dead ; 
Within it burns a Vondrous light, 
To chase the spirits that love the night ; 
That lamp shall burn unquenchably, 
Until the Eternal doom shall be." 

So spake the monk, and then the stone was 
lifted, after which the priest 'Vhis death- 
prayer prayed." Then unto Deloraine he 
said: 

" Now speed thee what thou hast to do, 
Or, Warrior, we may deeply rue; 
For those thou mayest not look upon 
Are gathering fast round the yawning stone." 

Surely one can see the dim, shadowy 
shapes that seem to hover there; one can 

95 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

see the old monk, majestic, calm, command- 
ing, sending forth those last cautionary 
words to a man terror-dumb. How often 
has Walter Scott sat on the heap of stones 
now designated as his favorite seat, and lived 
over again the scenes in Scottish song and 
story which glorify and romanticize Mel- 
rose's holy abbey. It seems as if he ought 
to sleep there in his last sleep, but he himself 
decreed it otherwise. Wherefore, the visitor 
who goes to Abbotsford and Melrose drives 
on to Dryburgh Abbey, some four miles 
away, and there, in another mass of ruins, 
green-grown with ivy and moss-encrowned, 
the Laird of Abbotsford rests in a stately 
tomb. 

Dryburgh has not the architectural beau- 
ties of Melrose, but it has the environment. 
It possesses the sacred isolation of a holy 
place set apart. A swaying, swinging bridge 
that warns visitors against crossing it in num- 
bers exceeding ten makes the frail connection 

96 



MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD 

over the Tweed waters that brings the abbey 
into communication with the world without; 
and long, winding walks, heavily foliaged, 
give a dignified and ceremonious approach. 
Only after a certain set preliminary form 
does one come to Dryburgh, to its brooding 
silence, its delicious coolness, its wide, open- 
air sacredness. This is indeed a congrega- 
tion of fragments, beautiful fragments, of a 
simplicity and grandeur not to be denied. 
There is poetry at Dryburgh, lots of it, for 
everything is undisturbed and undisturbing. 
There are surprises too, delightfully roman- 
tic, such as the abbot's parlor in its cool, 
green, sheltered solitude. And deep down 
in the gray lights of damp, dank vaults, the 
visitor inscribes his name in a great book. 
It is the final touch to a memorable occasion. 
One has been in the land of dreams and 
poetry and romance, and has been there 
with one of the greatest of dreamers, of 
poets, of romancers — Sir Walter Scott ! 
7 97 



TWO QUAINT cathedral; CITIES 



THE IMP OF LINCOLN 

Who set thee in yon lofty site, 

Oh, naughty imp ? I hear thee crow ; 

I watch the smile about thy thick lips grow 

As o'er thy face the ever-changing light 

Reveals in shadows tragic thy soul's night. 
Thine it has been through ages long to know 
Historic pageants and the ceremonial show, 

Thine to indulge in secret, deep delight. 

But now thy simple, grinning face looks down 

On remnants splendid for their great renown; 

Priest, eager student, and the tourist gay 

With interest fill thy otherwise dull day. 

And so throughout the centuries yet to be. 

Thou still the changes of a moving world shall see. 



VII 
TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

ANCIENT ROME IN THE HEART OF ENGLAND 

If one is limited in choice when planning a 
visit to some of the English cathedral cities, 
it is perfectly safe to decide upon York and 
Lincoln. There are several advantages in so 
deciding: of all the magnificent specimens 
of church architecture in the British Isles 
there is none more interesting to study than 
the Church of St. Mary at Lincoln ; through- 
out the length and breadth of England there 
is no such important collection of stained 
glass as may be found in York; moreover, 
if one be crossing the Scotch border from the 
region of Melrose with the intention of mak- 
ing London by a direct route, York and Lin- 

. , lOI 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

coin become the most logical stopping-off 
places. In fact, a better combination of his- 
toric value and convenient situation could 
scarcely be devised. 

It is not the purpose of this sketch of im- 
pressions to enter into historic or architec- 
tural details concerning either of the towns 
under question. Both date from the days 
when Julius Caesar came over into Britain, 
and both bear the marks of the subsequent 
Roman occupation. Lincoln, indeed, existed 
and even flourished prior to the appearance 
of the legions, who set up a camp close 
by the little town and called it " Lindum 
Colonia.'' 

In later days William the Conqueror, mak- 
ing a proud tour of his freshly-acquired prov- 
inces, quelled rebellious York, then passed 
on to Lincoln, and to-day the tourist sees the 
very Roman gate, known as the Newport 
Arch, through which the hero of Hastings 
entered at that time. In those days Lincoln 

102 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

was one of the four principal cities in 
England. 

However, one does not need guide-book 
evidence to appreciate the finer sentiments 
that hover about these two quaint, ancient 
towns. For quaint they surely are, and no 
one could deny the ancientness of their ex- 
terior aspects. 

York presents an almost fortified front. 
A massive wall, constructed of great stones, 
forms a rampart round about a large section 
of the city. One encounters it immediately 
upon leaving the railroad station, and to fol- 
low it gives the surest road to the cathedral. 
To-day this age-old wall serves as a prome- 
nade, but its warlike appearance gives the 
town the demeanor of a hoary-headed sol- 
dier, a veteran resting after years of hardy 
service, but resting always in the conscious- 
ness of his achievements, to recall which he 
continues to parade his old-fashioned regi- 
mentals and to display his now rusted, out- 
103 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

of-date armor. The stateliness of York is 
not soon forgotten; its native dignity is 
dominant in its mass of walls, its great gates, 
its many bridges, and throughout the shad- 
owed recesses of its most glorious and glori- 
fying monument, the cathedral. There is 
not the time to describe the remains of St. 
Mary's Abbey, as exquisite a piece of ruined 
masonry as one can find in England; or the 
historic old Guildhall, resting silently but im- 
pressively on the river-bank. Nor may one 
dwell upon the narrow, sloping, crooked, 
curving streets through which one must 
wind and wind again while touring the city, 
■ — every one of which seems to lead like 
Roman roads to but one place, in this case 
again, the cathedral. 

Few spots in England aflford so unique a 
sight as this prosperous York town. On 
the continent one is forever running into 
the mediaeval atmosphere ; steep streets — the 
width of foot-paths — are the rule rather 
104 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

than the exception; but in England one is 
less impressed by this old-world habit of 
unchangeableness, this air of having stood 
for centuries and of intending to stand un- 
altered for centuries still. It takes but a 
small power of the imagination to picture the 
Roman legionary striding with bold step and 
clanking sword through the irregular streets 
of the olden city, saluting as he goes some 
dainty English maiden, who peeps from her 
overhanging casement out into the roadway. 
Try as they will to give York an air of spick- 
and-spanness, the very cobbles in the streets 
cry out in rebellion, and the dilapidated, 
rain-beaten, sagging, staggering house- 
fronts in the older sections of the city defy 
once and for all the meddling hand of resto- 
ration and improved hygienic conditions. 
Yet humbly enough they bow their storm- 
haunted heads in deference to the greater 
majesty of the temple in their midst, and 
York minster lifts its noble frame protect- 
105 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

ingly above a motley of ragged, jagged 
roofs that cherish its most ancient traditions. 

Seen from a distance the minster is vastly 
impressive — a mighty structure, typically 
Gothic, rearing three great, square towers 
against the sky. A trifle squat that central 
tower, to be sure, but then, as some one has 
put it, " as English builders did not fully 
master the Gothic constructional scheme, 
they could not build tall churches." 

On nearer view the beautiful if somewhat 
mixed variety of the architectural details 
engrosses one, and upon entering, one feels 
at once the calm sanctity of an edifice into 
which genius has poured its soul. Later will 
come the realization that York has some- 
thing which most English cathedrals lack; 
at present one senses merely a satisfying 
warmth in the pervading dimness that dif- 
fuses through the shadows the suggestion 
of a holy glow. 

.York has lights, the richly subdued lights 
1 06 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

of wonderful, old, stained-glass windows. 
A voluble guide in any English cathedral 
v/ill painstakingly explain the destructions 
wrought by Cromwell to rare windows and 
the splendid brasses of the churches he so 
undauntingly demolished. But whatever 
the Puritan crimes in the matter of windows, 
certain precautionary measures saved a num- 
ber of York's choicest specimens, with the 
result that the somewhat startling aspect of 
*' well-washness," which obtains in most 
English churches of the monumental type, 
is not so apparent at York. Here, under the 
sweep of lofty, wide-curved arches, a soft 
light faintly glows, and looking up to the 
northern end of the transept we see the five 
remarkable lancet-windows which constitute 
the famous " Five Sisters " group. 

Unfounded as it may be, and impossible 

practically, Dickens' legend in " Nicholas 

Nickleby '' instantly comes to one — of how 

five beautiful sisters worked on a rarely large 

107 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

piece of embroidery; how one of them died 
and was buried in the nave of the minster; 
how the other four gathered there and con- 
ceived the idea of having a window de- 
signed. They secured the permission of the 
church authorities, and the group of five 
arrow-Hke windows was wrought, the design 
being done from an exact copy of the piece 
of embroidery which they five had worked 
on together. Then, singularly enough, when 
the window was placed, the sun shone 
through it with wonderful beauty, and a 
brilliant gleam of light stretched away until 
it illumined the name " ALICE '' carved on 
the youngest sister's tomb. Whatever the 
true history of the window, it is most deli- 
cately worked out in a fine pattern of exqui- 
sitely tinted glass, the pale light from which 
sheds a soft glory through the portion of 
the church it reaches. 

The great East window comprises two 
hundred panels, each one of which depicts 
io8 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

a portion of the Scripture story, from the 
Creation to the Death of Absalom, conclud- 
ing with an interpretation of Revelation. 
This is a window compact of many colors, 
a remarkable example of early English 
stained glass at its best. All York's win- 
dows are double-mulHoned — a unique fea- 
ture — and her pillars and shafts are 
crowned with beautiful carvings, of an in- 
finite variety of designs, as fascinating to 
contemplate as the flowered cloisters and 
the audacious gargoyles of Melrose. 

To describe minutely the many points of 
interest that make York famous would ne- 
cessitate the more strictly guide-book form 
of narrative; to recount the long line of 
events that link present-day England with 
Roman invasion through the history of this 
mighty minster would mean to enter defi- 
nitely the field of historic research. I am 
dealing with impressions, with atmospheres, 
with ghosts, and with the sentiments to 
109 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

which associations give significance. Stand 
under the Hght of the " Five Sisters " and 
experience that wonderful sensation of being 
present at the passing pageant of some nine- 
teen centuries. The occupations of peace, 
the devastations of war, have their sepa- 
rate places in the quick-moving, ever-chang- 
ing scenes. The hardy Briton, the rough- 
soldier, the gentle lady; kings, queens, and 
warriors; the conqueror and the conquered 
■ — all are here, and in the midst of them a 
great church rises, little by little and with 
many vicissitudes, till it stands complete and 
supreme. York's historical days would seem 
to be over ; the minster is now a monument, 
sacred to the memory of doughty deeds and 
proud achievements. In its dim aisles the 
townsmen bend their bodies before the Pres- 
ence that is there enshrined; visitors come 
and go, speaking softly, stepping lightly, for 
the Peace of God inhabits the temple now 
that the days of tumult and of strife, the 
no 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

clatter of arms and the storms of political 
conventions are over and gone. 

Leaving York one takes the train direct 
for Lincoln, riding through a flat, open coun- 
try that in summer is covered with wheat 
fields, while among the tall, nodding stalks, 
heavy with grain, the passer-by glimpses 
bright bunches of wild poppies, a vivid 
scarlet nestling against a background of 
gold. 

Lincolnshire is a county of fev/ hills ; that 
is why the cathedral, resting on an eminence, 
can be seen from such a distance. Its prom- 
inent position distinguishes it from many 
other English cathedrals, and to find a fit 
companion for it one must again have re- 
course to the continent. As a writer on the 
subject has put it, most cathedral towns have 
an appearance of subsequent growth; that 
is, the cathedral having been erected, a town 
has been builded and developed around it. 
But at Lincoln, the cathedral is " the proper 
III 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

crown and finish for the city which bears it 
aloft in a close, sturdy clasp." Prudence dic- 
tates that the visitor to Lincoln take advan- 
tage of one of the several good inns that 
cluster on the cathedral hill; otherwise the 
journey up the steep, narrow, winding streets 
involves an expenditure of physical force 
that quite overcomes a possible enjoyment of 
the great minster's features. 

Lincoln is replete with reminiscences of 
Roman occupation. The rough-hewn stones, 
sturdily mounded, that form the Newport 
Arch are typically Roman; the steep streets 
and the narrow-angled corners present a 
house frontage that is often age-encrusted. 

In Lincoln Cathedral Lancet-Pointed work 
predominates; Decorated work is much in 
evidence; there are Norman features still 
remaining, and the Perpendicular offers its 
contribution to the artistic effect of the 
whole. In this way one may trace the growth 
of architecture through the centuries in this 

112 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

one cathedral, whose impressive front opens 
on a small area of green; whose cloisters 
are coolly refreshing in their shadows, 
divinely touched by brief glimpses of sun- 
light. The present church was begun in the 
thirteenth century, though the West front 
and a portion of the nave remain from the 
earlier church consecrated in the eleventh 
century. The great East window is the 
noblest example of Geometrical Decorated in 
the kingdom, and the Angel Choir, built be- 
tween 1255 and 1280, shows Gothic architec- 
ture at its best in the delicate and beautiful 
carvings. 

I lay awake my first night in Lincoln and 
heard Great Tom chime the midnight hour, 
and nothing in Lincoln makes the cathedral 
so certainly a central power as this booming 
forth of the hours as the days, months, and 
years go by. I left York with my perceptions 
of historic values quickened; I went out of 

Lincoln subdued by the feeling that comes 
8 113 



TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES 

to one in a holy place. My last look at the 
cathedral was perforce an upward one, and 
all the significance of the " city set upon a 
hill '' was suggested by the proudly conscious 
yet benignant uplift of those mighty towers. 



114 



LONDON: 'A HISTORIC AND 
LITERARY GHOSTLAND 



LONDON FROM ST. PAUL'S DOME 

If thou would'st see a city then of dreams, 
Go, mount the steps that reach to St. Paul's dome ; 
No Florence this, nor yet again a ruined Rome, 
A city here through which a great life streams. 
In veiling mists Thames water brightly gleams; 
Around tall spires soft-shadowed, gray clouds foam, 
Shot here and there with sunlight dulled to 

chrome — 
Far down, each street with moving figures teems. 

From here Westminster's towers dimly rise, 
And hitherward Big Ben's strong echo cries ; 
As spiders' webs a narrow brooklet span. 
So Thames' banks have been linked by Man. 
And down the waters gently trail 
A long, dim line of floating stack and sail. 



VIII 

LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 
LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

The perennial charm of London, elusive as 
it is, and subtle in its defiance of analysis, 
seems to resolve itself, in the final instance, 
into a quality of atmosphere produced by the 
audaciousness with which historic facts, the 
reminiscences of ages long gone by, intrude 
themselves upon, mingle with, and affect the 
movements of an essentially modern spirit. 
In no other city in the world does the march 
of a typically twentieth century progress 
mark time so harmoniously with the solemn, 
heavy tread of the shades of those who tra- 
versed the same paths centuries ago. Age 
and modernity arm in arm — but the one in 
the full vigor of health and life, the other a 
117 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

pale shadow of the things that have been; 
yet, in the very streets, these ghosts of a 
dead Past insist upon hobnobbing with 
the representatives of a Hving and active 
Present. 

True, one by one, the older landmarks dis- 
appear; little by little the surroundings 
change, taking on an entirely new aspect. 
The process of evolution, laboring over mo- 
rass and river bed, over mud hut and crudely 
constructed stonework, has finally produced 
the magnificence of a Saint Paul's and the 
splendor of a long array of beautifully 
builded and as beautifully equipped hotels 
and residence places ; while the narrow lanes, 
lacking sanitation, of a city too thickly 
grown, are spreading, year by year, into 
broad, clean streets and smooth highways, 
into wide-sweeping parks and squares that 
are green with fresh foliage and alive with 
the singing of birds. 

But man himself, in his humanity, changes 
ii8 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

only in degree, not in kind. Your up-to-date 
Londoner is punier than his ancestors, who 
produced an Og, a Gog, and a Magog; he 
dresses himself with a care that would have 
astounded his bloodthirsty forefathers; he 
eats with a fork and for the most part drinks 
his tea noiselessly; but the hardy blood of 
the Northland throbs in his veins: he is as 
ready to fight — in a just cause — as eager 
to hunt the creatures of forest and field, and 
just as eager to devour them after the cap- 
ture. And he retains, moreover, something 
of that hunger for amusement, that love of 
the spectacular, w^iich gave rise in the days 
of his fathers to the tourney and the joust, 
the pageant and the festival, and, in Eliza- 
beth's time, provided the impetus from which 
came the plays of Kit Marlowe and Shake- 
speare and the others of their tribe. London 
is no longer the scene of these merry occa- 
sions, but the average Cockney — as w^ell 
as his more polished brother — finds his soul 
119 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

thrill to the sound of the drum and the clatter 
of hoofs, and watches with high heart the 
parade of the Life Guards, resplendent in 
their uniforms of gold and red, and majestic 
under the nod of their long plumes. And 
this same Cockney stands for hours, by the 
side of his best girl, spending his hard- 
earned shilling for the pleasure of viewing 
from the pit the latest popular comedy, or 
the newest, most advertised spectacle of the 
Hippodrome. Because of this delight in a 
" show," the Lord Mayor of London con- 
tinues to be the most gorgeously appareled 
official in the kingdom, riding in a coach of 
gold, attended by '^ gold-covered footmen 
and coachman, with a golden chain and a 
chaplain, and his great sword of State." He 
rules, in reality, over an area of something 
like a square mile, for to that space the 
'' city " proper is restricted ; but it pleases 
the people to surround him with time-hon- 
ored ceremonial, and to retain the customs 

120 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

that in former years befitted the dignity and 
importance of his position. 

One going into London for the first time 
has an experience that will never be repeated. 
For only once is it given to know the thrill 
of that sudden plunge into the hubbub and 
whirl of earth's greatest city. The queer 
part of it is, that through and over the con- 
fusion, the bustle, there presides a certain 
air of deliberate and leisurely calm; one 
senses the underlying order and precision 
of it all, beside which Manhattan presents 
but a chaos, a turmoil, a reckless, heedless, 
unnecessary, and uninspiring rush. 

There is music in the streets of London 
town — wonderful music that soothes and 
entrances. Up and down the Strand, up and 
down Fleet Street, over Ludgate Hill, and 
around St. Paul's; into Cheapside, in Ox- 
ford Circus, in Piccadilly, through the Mall 
— the soft thud of countless horses' feet, the 
tramp, tramp of numberless pedestrians 

121 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

mingle together, with a perfectness of 
rhythm that is to the din of our American 
metropohs as. a symphony of Beethoven is to 
a score of the erratic Strauss. No noise of 
trolleys, no break in the steady stream of 
traffic; London knows that haste does not 
make speed, but is more likely to retard it. 
So the heart of the city beats regularly and 
strong; the pulse indicates no fever, but the 
calm pride of a confident health. 

This, then, is London, the finished product 
into which the Londons of all the yesterdays 
have been merged, yet so merged that each 
retains its individual features, its essential 
characteristics, its well-defined lines of de- 
marcation. There is historic London, cen- 
tering in the Abbey, St. Paul's, the Thames, 
and the Tov/er; there is literary London, 
with its relics in Fleet Street and Cheapside, 
and all about the Temple; there is the Lon- 
don that environed a Milton; the London 
that submitted to the dictates of a Johnson; 

122 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

the London that inspired a Dickens and a 
Thackeray. 

However, to attempt to describe these 
various Londons by following up the distin- 
guishing marks of each were a task likely to 
strain the capacity of several volumes; in 
the case of an article like this it were an 
effort to accomplish the impossible. More- 
over, this is not a catalog which we are build- 
ing; our study is not scientific; it is psy- 
chological. Our ambition is to discern and 
appreciate the spirit — or the spirits — of a 
city that has more of soul-quality than per- 
haps any city on earth. We have sensed this 
soul-quality ; it is our pleasure to erect upon 
it a series of reminiscences that will unveil 
the faces and figures of those myriad moving 
shadows that crowd themselves between and 
upon the more tangible forms of a material 
sphere. 

There is the Abbey, for instance, with its 
mountains of monuments and its layers of 
123 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

dust. Each group, each statue, each plate 
of stone so carefully carven, calls up before 
the mind's eye some figure, now distinct, or 
again vague, according to the knowledge 
that supplies its details. For so the fine frag- 
ments, that in human shape at one time 
housed a mighty, potent spirit, reconstruct 
themselves upon a film of recollection that 
peoples the vast spaces of choir and naves 
until the centuries have seemed to roll away, 
and Time has seemed to vanish, leaving the 
burly form of Dr. Johnson, clad in greasy 
velvet and soiled lace, side by side with the 
dapper figure of the benign-faced Thackeray, 
while the sprightly Garrick claps a daring 
hand upon the shoulder of the solemn-vis- 
aged, consciously majestic Irving. Even 
old Geoffrey Chaucer comes to life again, 
astride, as always, the back of the same an- 
cient, wooden-legged, stiff-backed, rocking- 
horselike steed which, according to the books 
we know, bore him on his memorable jour- 
124 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

ney to Canterbury. And beside these, 
what hosts of kings, queens, soldiers, states- 
men, priests, poets, and historians fill the 
Abbey's aisles, as, imagination alive, the 
history seeker, the book lover, the hero wor- 
shiper, crowd about these treasured, over- 
treasured tombs ! 

Many of these same figures live again, in 
different guises, here and there throughout 
the city's length and breadth. Broad White- 
hall has her ghosts, her memories — the 
ghost of the beautiful Anne Boleyn, who 
danced in these palace halls with the eighth 
Henry, and so sealed her doom; the ghost 
of a fallen cardinal, the once so superior 
Wolsey ; the ghost of a king led forth by his 
own people to the execution block ; the ghost 
of a ruler of iron, the Lord Protector Crom- 
well, by whose side the fair face of the in- 
spired Milton glows as with a divine fire. 
Only a little further on, and proud Trafal- 
gar lifts the great height of her triumphal 
125 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

column high, bearing aloft the bronze effigy 
of her sailor-hero whose never-to-be-forgot- 
ten slogan sounds down from the skies to 
put new heart, new courage into Englishmen. 
Charing Cross teems with the life of a 
contemporaneous day; the Strand marches 
on with alert and energetic tread. But in 
this Strand the stately Addison strolls, pon- 
dering; the gay Dick Steele bows his grace- 
ful head and sweeps away his cap ; the dandy 
Pope rides gorgeously in his sedan — all on 
their way to the Kit-Kat Club, which in their 
times held its meetings in the Trumpet, 
standing on Shire Lane, a narrow street run- 
ning off the Strand near the Law Courts. 
There is no Trumpet now, to which a doting 
father can carry his tiny girl, as Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu was carried, a child of 
seven, to be the toast of these learned and 
talented men. The ghosts may continue to 
seek the neighborhood of the Lane, but they 
will wander on unceasingly, in the Strand, 
126 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

in Fleet Street, along the Thames ; they will 
seek rest amid the shadows of the Temple, 
conversing one with another of those days 
when the Thames glistened with the gilt and 
glowed with the colors of a thousand pleas- 
ure craft, gay barges filled with gayer ladies, 
and gallant gentlemen brightly bedight; 
when Covent Garden bore the aspect of a 
fashionable promenade, and jest was given 
for jest, laughter for laughter, where now 
prosaic clerks, with serious mien, go to 
and from their business, sober-clad, sober- 
minded, bent only upon the securing of a 
humble maintenance in surroundings as dull 
as they were once colorful, as forsaken of 
fashion as they were once favored of it. 

The spaces between the Strand and the 
Thames might tell many a story could lips 
long dumb set them forth. For noble pal- 
aces have fallen to dust on whose founda- 
tions mighty hotels have risen; and where 
the American tourist takes his ease, looking 
127 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

out over the river, there are the shadows of 
a historical pageant that begins back before 
the time of Henry VIII and comes down to 
the day when omnibuses replace the river 
barges, and the highway of the Thames 
grows less indispensable. The gardens of 
the Embankment are beautiful in the neat- 
ness, the well-keptness of their array; but 
the ghosts walk more shyly in these open 
and unfamiliar spaces; one must build up 
within one's self the various pictures — of 
Lady Jane Grey's triumphal embarkation, 
as she takes her brief journey as Queen to 
the Tower, that scene of brilliancy and yet 
of evil purport, so graphically described by 
Ainsworth in his " Tower of London." In 
Elizabeth's day the river fairly scintillated 
with the splendor of the pageant that Queen 
Bess so dearly loved; and now the pres- 
ence of Will Shakespeare brings a new glory 
into scenes of merrymaking, scenes of care- 
less, festive grace. Let us go into the 
128 




h 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

Temple, lingering among its gardens, then 
passing through to Middle Temple Hall. 
The Temple's history is too rich in facts for 
us to attempt to trace it here; enough that 
we recall how, in the year 1601, " Twelfth 
Night " was performed in this great hall, 
Elizabeth witnessing, Shakespeare, doubt- 
less, presiding. Beautiful in itself as this 
place is, no association could more endear it 
to the hearts of the multitude than this which 
connects it with an early presentation of a 
play so many thousands love. 

The Temple has harbored a long line of 
the illustrious. Henry Fielding had cham- 
bers there ; Cowper was among the lodgers ; 
Burke studied there and Charles Lamb was 
born in Crown Office Row. Wycherly, Beau- 
mont, Congreve, Tom Moore, and Sheridan, 
all provide ghosts for the Temple; but no 
figure is more distinct, more dominating 
than that of Dr. Johnson. 

Dr. Johnson belongs at London's very 
9 129 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

center. After nearly two hundred years his 
great heart continues to beat in perfect ac- 
cord with the heart of the city that nourished 
him. 

The Johnson Buildings in the Temple com- 
memorate the fact that he had a room in 
Inner Temple Lane from 1760 to 1765, and 
no one standing in the passageway before 
them can fail to recall BoswelFs story of his 
first visit to the Doctor, in 1763, when the 
particular Scotchman found the good Doc- 
tor's apartment, furniture, and morning 
dress sufficiently uncouth. " But," continued 
the loyal Boswell, ^' he received me very cour- 
teously; and all these slovenly peculiarities 
were forgotten the moment he began to 
talk." 

Goldsmith enjoyed much of the compan- 
ionship of Johnson in the Temple, and as 
one walks in the garden to-day, one comes 
upon the simple slab that is supposed to mark 
poor Goldy's resting-place. 
130 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

How often may Johnson and his poet 
friend have walked in these gardens, Hnger- 
ing by the fountain, as the good Doctor dis- 
coursed in his able wont and the faithful 
Boswell mayhap found excuse to become an 
appreciative listener ! It may be that Burke 
and Reynolds came to call upon them here, 
as we know they, with Johnson, mounted the 
stairs to pay their last respects to Goldsmith 
dying. Years later the Temple knew Thack- 
eray and Tennyson and William Blake, while 
Dickens used its picturesque Fountain Court 
for a settins: in " Martin Chuzzlewit/' 

But we must resist the temptation to fol- 
low up the many suggestions which a riiere 
mention of the Temple engenders. With 
just a glance at the quaint, old, shrub-shad- 
owed church, guarding carefully the dust of 
the Crusaders who founded it, let us go out 
of the Temple Gardens by the opposite en- 
trance-way into Fleet Street — sacred to 
modern newspaperdom, and in the eigh- 
131 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

teenth century especially associated with the 
pursuit of letters. Fleet Street was one of 
Johnson's favorite haunts, and for many 
years he lived close by it, in various houses. 
From the Temple it is but a little way to 
Gough Square, now entered through Hind 
Court from Fleet Street, where still stands 
the house in which the Rambler was writ- 
ten, and the Dictionary was completed. 
Commercialism of to-day has appropriated 
Gough Square, but the house that sheltered 
the first English lexicographer has still some 
marks whereby it may be known. 

From Fleet Street, also, we enter Wine 
Office Court, and bespeak our luncheon in 
the queer, quaint little restaurant, the Che- 
shire Cheese. Here, as in the Temple, Time 
pauses in deference to the memories that 
would linger, and here, as in no place in 
London, we enter into the world of the 
eighteenth century coffee-house. In the 
Cheshire Cheese we experience that atmos- 
132 




< 

•X 

u 

o 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

phere so congenial to the talkative Steele, 
the meditative Addison, the voluble Johnson. 
Here the ghosts are, as it were, incarnate 
spirits, and no one is in the least surprised 
to hear the deep growl of the dogmatic John- 
son setting down his official comment upon 
some topic appertaining to literature or to 
life. 

Boswell, it is true, omits to mention the 
Cheshire Cheese in the famous " Life." In 
fact, we have no very authoritative reference 
to this particular refreshment house. Canny 
proprietors have brass-plated the Doctor's 
favorite seat, and have hung his portrait 
over it, while in an upper room they display 
a small collection of interesting relics once 
associated with him. For myself, I should 
say that the proprietors have the better of 
the argument, insomuch as the Cheshire 
Cheese was within convenient distance of 
the Temple and of at least three houses in 
which Johnson lived; it has been noted for 
^33 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

about two centuries for certain especially 
prepared dishes, and it must have been fre- 
quented by just that kind of miscellaneous 
company in which Johnson was wont to find 
ready listeners. 

At any rate, the Cheshire Cheese has en- 
dured, and has retained its " old-worldness " 
in the very center of a new world, has gath- 
ered unto itself a company of ghosts in the 
presence of whom the present-day visitor is 
not abashed. And in this company Johnson 
and Goldsmith are very tangible, very alive, 
even as on that morning long ago, in this 
very Wine Office Court, in a house not now 
standing, Johnson read " The Vicar of 
Wakefield," and, taking it away from its 
author's lodgings, secured a publisher's ad- 
vance upon it by means of which an irate 
landlady was appeased and Goldsmith v/as 
spared eviction. 

We might linger long in the Cheshire 
Cheese, satisfying our hunger with pigeon 
134 



xl— _1, 



1 





. Q 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

pie and our souls with reflection upon good 
days gone by; but we must hurry on for just 
the briefest visits to one or two more ghost- 
haunted London spots. On the top of an 
omnibus we may go on up Fleet Street, as 
'' through this strait all business London 
pours," and ascend Ludgate Hill to St. 
Paul's. And now indeed our second sight 
furnishes us a vision. For here, tradition 
has it, in the days when Csesar entered Brit- 
ain, the Romans built a temple to Diana 
or to Jupiter; on this spot Ethelbert erected, 
in 6 10, a wooden church, rebuilt in 961 and 
destroyed by fire in 1087. Then, some time 
later, the first St. Paul's was begun. 

It was in Elizabeth's day that St. Paul's 
tangible history opened, though, as some one 
puts it, " the church in that day was no 
edifying spectacle, resembling rather the 
temple from which Christ drove the usu- 
rers." For, despoiled of its beauties prior to 
Elizabeth's reign, the cathedral was used 
135 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

as a market-place and a thoroughfare, the 
highway for porters, fruit sellers, fish mon- 
gers ; the lounging-place for resplendent gal- 
lants and boisterous soldiers home from the 
wars. Here gamblers tossed coin and en- 
terprising tradesmen made their bargains, 
while laughter and oaths awakened the 
echoes as here some jested and others waxed 
dangerous in altercation. Gentle Shake- 
speare doubtless knew these scenes full well ; 
they may have furnished his Rialto, as most 
assuredly they suggested many of his most 
entertaining characters. But Elizabeth dies, 
the cathedral sinks more and more into sac- 
rilege and decay; then, in the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Sir Christopher Wren 
is commissioned to restore the old pile. We 
will refer to H. Barton Baker and his 
" Streets of London " for a description of 
the next episode — the great fire that swept 
away the filth of desecration and gave room 
for the new St. Paul's: 
136 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

" The scaffolding is erected, all is ready for a com- 
mencement. On the night of the 2d of September, 
1666, the watchman who is on guard, while dozing 
away the dark hours, becomes conscious of a red 
glare in the eastern sky, denoting a fire some little 
distance off; but conflagrations are so common 
among the wooden houses of old London that he 
thinks nothing of it, and falls asleep again. But 
by-and-by he is roused by a strange hurtling in the 
air, wailing voices and great clattering of feet, as 
though the stragglers of a routed army are sweep- 
ing by. Again he starts up and sees that citywards 
the sky is like molten brass, shot with tongues of 
flame and lurid spirals of smoke. He runs down 
and questions some of the sobbing, affrighted people 
hurrying past; but when he learns that the fire is 
away in Eastcheap he comforts himself with the 
reflection that it must certainly be stopped before it 
reaches Paul's, and goes to breakfast with the philo- 
sophical calm of selfishness. Each moment the 
fugitives increase and their cries grow more terrible : 
" Woe, woe to this wicked city, for the judgment 
day has come ! " is shrieked by a hundred voices. 
The air is hot and becoming almost unbreathable, it 
is so thick with the pungent odour of burning ; and 
the roar and swirl of the flames, the thunderous fall 
of buildings, can be heard coming nearer and nearer. 

137 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

Filled with horror he once more ascends the 
tower. 

Perhaps not since Nero gazed upon burning Rome 
has such a sight met human eyes; the sun is shin- 
ing, but the awful glow, the billowy clouds of smoke 
obscure the day ; beneath this canopy, that might be 
the roof of hell, blazes the city; it is a second Go- 
morrah; fire rains down upon it, fire surges up 
from it; streets, churches, houses, are a red-hot 
mass ; London Bridge is a cascade of flame, the river 
beneath, a burning lake. Dense showers of glitter- 
ing spangles borne on the east wind come nearer 
and nearer until they burn the watchman's clothes; 
people in the houses round about are wildly drag- 
ging out their furniture; tremendous explosions — 
they are endeavoring to stop the conflagration by 
blowing up houses — add a new horror to the hurly- 
burly; but all in vain, walls of flame, Hke the sand 
clouds of the desert, come whirling onwards, driv- 
ing shrieking wretches before them. Almost par- 
alysed by terror, the watchman descends and rushes 
into the stream of panic-stricken people fleeing down 
Ludgate Hill. When he turns to look he sees the 
flames like fiery pythons twisting round the scaffold- 
ing, and soon the old Cathedral is a mountain of 
fire, while with redoubled vigour, like the blast of a 
sirocco, the winged flames still speed onwards." 

138 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

So, after all, St. Paul's is comparatively 
new, and its newness dims the impressions 
of the ghosts that walk therein. We may 
dream, however, in the great cathedral, 
feeling the force of that humanity which 
gave history to this spot; then we go forth 
into Cheapside, and in the " busiest street 
in London " view a marvelous panorama of 
action, as the ghosts of Shakespeare's day, 
of John Milton's, pass and pass again among 
the crowds of tradesmen, officials, sight- 
seers, beggars, and fakirs, who throng 
Cheapside to-day. 

Cheapside is an appropriate highway to 
the Tower, the most famous, as it is the 
most tragical, of England's historic monu- 
ments, sharing the importance of its fame 
with the Abbey only. The ghostland of the 
Tower of London is too significant to be 
dismissed hastily, but at the present moment 
we must so dismiss it. Would we follow out 
its romance and its tragic story, we would go 
139 



LONDON: A HISTORIC AND 

to Harrison Ainsworth and his Old World 
novel, and with Og, Gog, and Magog would 
review the history of the gray old fortress 
in which beautiful women and gallant men^ 
angels and villains both, have paid the price 
of greatness won or of greatness thrust upon 
them. In the Tower queens reigned, kings 
reigned ; but in it, too, kings and queens and 
courtiers, faithful and unfaithful alike, came 
to their end. The fair form of Jane Grey 
cries for pity in the Tower's dusty shadows ; 
the strong voice of Raleigh murmurs brok- 
enly under the same roof that echoes the 
distressed weeping of the murdered princes. 
The very walls speak through the lips of the 
signatures of the long line of the illustrious 
who suffered here as prisoners, and each cut 
in the executioner's block has its story to 
tell. As a government arsenal, the Tower 
of London is now but a harmless relic of 
history, but no modern use to which it may 
be put can banish the ghosts that abide there. 
140 



LITERARY GHOSTLAND 

As the years move on, and modern meth- 
ods overcome the customs of earher days ; as 
streets are widened and cleared, and build- 
ings crumbling v^^ith age are taken away, 
the ghosts of the old London will need to ad- 
just themselves to newer habitations. They 
have had to do so already, and from many 
places they have wandered away, but it will 
be long years and many years, despite im- 
provements, ere Modernity will chase the 
ghosts from the Tower; ere a new world 
will annihilate the old world from the pre- 
cincts of Cheapside and Fleet Street and the 
Temple; ere the commercial craft that 
darken the Thames will overshadow the 
memories of the brilliant pageants that so 
often brightened its waters ; and ere the Ab- 
bey, ugly as it may be in its accumulations of 
the centuries, will yield up the ghosts that 
its multitude of tombs has gathered. Dust 
may return to dust and ashes to ashes; 
the souls of the dead may have departed 
141 



LONDON: A HISTORIC GHOSTLAND 

far, but the ghosts of historic memory 
linger ever, even after their familiar en- 
vironment has been taken away, and the 
traces of their everyday doings have 
vanished. 



142 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN WESTMIN- 
STER ABBEY 



DOWN WHITEHALL 

Where great Trafalgar enters Whitehall wide, 
As London's busy life goes marching through; 
There Landseer's lions like guardians, two and 
two, 

With patient air and attitude abide, 

'Neath the heroic form of him who died 

That England her bright glory might renew, 
To whom a greater empire might accrue 

That she might grow in worldly fame and pride. 

Down Whitehall wide the troops of Cromwell 

pranced, 
Backward and forward their sharp-edged swords 

glanced. 
In Whitehall wide a king, led forth to die. 
Laid low his head without a moan or cry. 
Down Whitehall ride proud princes to be crowned, 
And here are borne in death the world's renowned. 



IX 

HOUSE-CLEANING IN WESTMIN- 
STER ABBEY 

It has been said that Americans are more 
famiHar with Westminster Abbey than are 
Londoners themselves. Certain it is that 
Americans have contributed not a Httle to- 
ward the further embelHshment of this 
greatest and most comprehensive of Eng- 
land's national monuments; to American 
suggestion are owing many of its important 
features, and Americans more than any 
other nation's people most frequently and in 
the largest numbers visit it. 

Indeed, upon the shoulders of Americans 
one may almost lay the responsibility of 
having spoiled it. 

lo 145 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN 

For spoiled to a considerable degree this 
magnificent old pile has been. 

You recall going into St. Giles, in Edin- 
burgh. What a spirit of sanctity filled the 
place completely! You walked with light 
and hesitating step, you spoke in whispers, 
your heart-beat quickened as you seemed to 
approach closer and more closely the Great 
Presence which you knew was there. Even 
as the God of Israel accepted the gift of 
Solomon's temple, and took His rightful 
place in the Holy of Holies, so you knew the 
same God had taken up His abode in this 
vast auditorium, among the monuments that 
men have with reverent hands erected to 
brave comrades, to admirable statesmen, to 
martyrs to whose triumph this cathedral in 
itself is a living and enduring testimonial. 

You went into York Minster, into the ca- 
thedral at Lincoln, and there also the same 
softened tread and low voices, the reverent 
air, generally predominated. 
146 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

But you came to London; you sought out 
St. Paul's, and your ear was shocked by the 
noise and the hubbub, the tramp of many 
feet, the chorus of curious voices ; your gaze 
encountered the crude stare of the myriads 
of mere sightseers who can recognize in this 
beautiful example of Wren's finest work 
nothing more than a magnificent show place. 
Saddened, and just a bit heartsick, you took 
your way to the Abbey — surely here one 
might find that " profound and mysterious 
awe " which Washington Irving attributed 
to " the spaciousness and gloom of this vast 
edifice." 

But your search was in vain. At the very 
doorway your patronage was bespoken by 
the picture post-card vender; within, you 
found yourself in the midst of a great con- 
course, vast, moving, instinct with life, agog 
with curiosity; no humble worshipers these, 
come to commune with the Divine ; not even 
hero worshipers come in quest of monu- 
147 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN 

ments erected to the world's great ones; 
tourists, for the greater part, hugging Bae- 
dekers to their hearts, or scanning the pages 
of guide-books with a fanatic ferocity. 

This, then, is the atmosphere of the Abbey 
— that holy place which Saint Peter him- 
self is supposed to have dedicated; that 
mighty heaping up of architectural splen- 
dor, whose wide sweeps of arches have all 
the grace of massive oaken branches; in the 
shadows and spaces of whose lofty vaulted 
roofs angel bands might surely congregate 
to swell the splendid organ melodies that 
echo through their vastness. 

True, service in Westminster Abbey is im- 
pressive, duly imposing; but what spirit in 
a silence forced, an awe insisted upon ? The 
last word of the service over, and once more 
the everlasting hum of mingled voices, the 
thud of thousands of footsteps, the busy 
passing backward and forward of comments 
and criticisms, trite, unfeeling, ill-considered, 
148 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

tHe tinappreciative small talk of ignorance 
that poses for something infinitely better and 
more important. 

This then is Britain's Walhalla. This is 
the place where most of the greatest of the 
English poets, from Chaucer and Spenser to 
Browning and Alfred Tennyson, sleep the 
last sleep. Here are the accumulated tombs 
of kings and queens and princes and noble- 
men, from Edward the Confessor to Vic- 
toria. 

Warriors, statesmen, historians, drama- 
tists, novelists, and actors — all have a place, 
until interment for a prominent Englishman 
elsewhere than in the Abbey has come to be 
a distinction. St. Paul's and Westminster 
quarreled over Nelson's body. He was bur- 
ied in St. Paul's — whereupon the Abbey 
authorities added to their collection of effi- 
gies a popular Nelson figure, and decked it 
out in clothes worn by the Admiral at Traf- 
algar. It costs sixpence to see this wax 
149 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN 

figure ; it has cast the tomb at St. Paul's into 
the shade. 

Ben Jonson pleaded for just twelve inches 
by twelve of space in the Abbey for his 
grave. They buried him upright, so as 
not to exceed that space. Yet no spot in 
Westminster to-day stirs up a more heart- 
felt admiration than does that simple square 
slab on which was inscribed Sir William 
Davenant's unique but immortal tribute: 
*' O rare Ben Jonson ! " What need to 
erect a medallion in the Poets' Corner? 
Was not this monument enough and more 
pregnant with meaning? 

Overcrowdedness explains much of the 
disappointment that one encounters in West- 
minster Abbey — overcrowdedness and a 
much-needed renovation. Prosaic terms 
these for the edifice that has inspired men 
like Addison and Irving to burst almost into 
lyric praise of it. But Addison and Irving 
both lived before the days of the " Ameri- 
150 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

can tourist peril/' and before those days 
when so universally capital began to be made 
out of all historic landmarks and places and 
points of historic and literary interest. 

One can almost picture the second-hand 
dealer standing in the North Transept of the 
Abbey proclaiming his wares : '' A monu- 
ment to Lord Chatham! Sell it cheap! 
There are better ones more recently arrived; 
room must be made for them ! '^ 

In the Poets' Corner, no sense of fitness 
has been observed in the arrangement. 
Busts and medallions are scattered about 
promiscuously ; some of them signify tombs ; 
many are there merely as marks of commem- 
oration. In the floors are the tablets that 
cover the burial places of Browning, Dick- 
ens, Dr. Johnson, Handel, Garrick, Tenny- 
son, and Macaulay, and many, many more. 
The crowds surge over them with casual 
comment: "Here's Browning! Here's 
Tennyson! See what a small slab Henry 
151 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN 

Irving has ! " Poor Chaucer is thrown into 
insignificance; a Shakespeare statue that is 
wholly superfluous fills a large space, and a 
variety of portrait busts and lesser monu- 
ments that mean little in this place confuse 
the mind and blur the impressions that a 
more orderly array would naturally make. 

You enter the chapels. Dust, dirt, dingi- 
ness ; pasteboard signs rudely lettered ; incon- 
gruous monuments that mark the interment 
of a long line of nobles who mean noth- 
ing in the nation's history. The older coro- 
nation chair stands in the Chapel of Edward 
the Confessor, lost almost to view among 
the shadows; Edward the Confessor's tomb 
reminds one of a gypsy's worn and tattered 
tent. An example this of the same kind of 
forced, unnatural sentiment that keeps a 
scrap of dirty blanket, four inches square, on 
the bed of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Holy- 
rood Palace, and causes it to be pointed out 
as a bit of a blanket the Scotch queen used. 
152 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

Nothing in Westminster Abbey is more 
beautiful than the Chapel of King Henry 
VII. Yet I have seen that chapel in a state 
of untidiness and general upheaval that left 
only round tables and bottles to the imagi- 
nation to picture it as a concert hall after the 
performance is over, or a French cafe after 
an evening of hilarity. What if the choir 
stalls are superbly carved in rich, dark oak; 
v^hat if each seat does bear in brass the coat- 
of-arms of that particular Knight of the 
Bath to w^hose occupation it is sacred; here 
indeed is " pomp of architecture, and the 
elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. . . . 
Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the 
chisel, to have been robbed of its weight 
and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, 
and the fretted roof achieved with the won- 
derful minuteness and airy security of a cob- 
web." ^ 

But one needs a restful atmosphere, an 

* Washington Irving. 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN 

environment of peace and reverential awe in 
which to examine and appreciate this sculp- 
tured beauty, these carven wonders. De- 
molished by fire, worn away by wind and 
storm Melrose Abbey may be, yet in its silent 
shadows one's heart is lifted up in a strange 
exaltation, one's perceptions of the finer 
beauties of architecture are quickened; we 
stand in awe and contemplate those marvels 
of chiseled patterns, those poets' dreams 
made real in stone. 

There are times, doubtless many of them, 
when the tourist hordes have winged their 
way homeward, and the patriotic English- 
man is otherwise occupied, that the Abbey is 
left to a peaceful contemplation of its aged- 
ness. At such times we may reflect, with 
Addison : 

"When I see kings lying beside those who deposed 
them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, 
or the holy men who divided the world with their 
contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and as~ 

154 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

tonishment on the little competitions, factions, and 
debates of mankind." 

Perhaps in some one of these seasons 
Westminster Abbey will be subjected to such 
a house-cleaning as is needed, and once 
again the grandeur and splendor of a beauti- 
ful temple, with its wealth of sentiment re- 
siding in those histories and personalities 
which it so vividly recalls, will gain power 
over the spirit of curiosity and commercial- 
ism now so prominent, and the " great 
quiet " of a place holy and sanctified will be 
restored, as well as its furnishings renovated 
and renewed. Perhaps, just as the Abbey 
authorities awoke to the fact, some years 
ago, that the wax effigies of Elizabeth and 
her companions in " efiigydom " ought to be 
tricked out anev/, they will one day realize 
that fewer monuments and a better and more 
orderly arrangement of them, some fresh 
paint and a few brass signboards, will do 
more to uphold the prestige of the great pile 

155 



HOUSE-CLEANING IN 

they love than any catering to random 
whims in the matter of new and additional 
monuments, or suchlike resorts as that of 
providing figures in wax to make up for a 
deficiency in tombs of popular heroes. 



156 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 



THE FIELDS AT LANGLEY 

Come, let us walk in Langley fields, 

Where dockens flaunt their colors bright, 

Where richest green and pink and yellow 
All mingle with the gay sunlight. 

The sheep a happy pasture find 

In Langley's olden meadow ways ; 
The birds a mating-place have there 

And sing glad songs through long bright days. 

Afar the towers of Windsor rise ; 

From Horton way the breeze drives clear; 
The fields at Langley sacred are, 

For youthful Milton lingered here. 

These fields the Milton music heard 
Ere yet in words it was expressed; 

The quaint church here a shelter gave 

The lad whose worth was scarcely guessed. 

To-day at Langley is a shrine, 

A bookish room, the rare delight 
Of " Lycidas' " young author, whose 

Slim hands did here a many verses write. 

So come and walk in Langley fields. 
And seek the old church dimly gray. 

Where shadows chase the gold sunlight 
And life is one long, peaceful day. 



X 

THE HOMES OF MILTON 

One by one the various homes and haunts 
of the poet Milton have disappeared. The 
necessity for widening London streets and 
the gradual decay of the older houses have 
obliterated many of the once sacred land- 
marks of the ancient city, and especially 
have the numerous places of abode asso- 
ciated with Milton been the objects of 
demolition. 

John Milton — so the biographies tell us 
■ — was born in Bread Street, at the Sign of 
the Spread Eagle, on December 9, 1608. I 
set out one morning to find the place. My 
guidebook to literary London informed me 
that the site of the birthplace was now occu- 
pied by warehouses, numbered 58 to 6^, and 
159 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

that one might find there a bust of Milton 
kept to commemorate the spot. 

I took a " bus " to St. Paul's, walked around 
the churchyard, where once stood the fa- 
mous St. Paul's School, which Ben Jonson, 
John Leland, Camden, Pepys, and John Mil- 
ton himself used to attend — a school that 
was years ago removed to Hammersmith, 
though a tablet still marks the old site — 
and striking off into Cheapside, walked up 
that busy thoroughfare until I saw a narrow 
by-street, marked in bold, black letters, 
Bread Street. 

This is in the very heart of Old London, 
and in Milton's day it was, as now, the 
center of a busy town's activity. Through 
the cathedral, as through a thoroughfare, 
wandered all day long the " gentry, lords, 
and courtiers, and men of all professions." 
In short, St. Paul's afforded through its 
middle aisle the fashionable promenade of 
seventeenth-century London, while beyond 
1 60 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

it Cheapside gave a bustling market-place, 
as is indicated by the names that cling to 
its streets — Bread Street, Milk Street, 
Honey Lane, and the like. It was in Cheap- 
side, by the way, between Bread and Friday 
streets, where stood the Mermaid Tavern, 
in which gathered, half a century before. 
Sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Spenser, 
Beaumont, Fletcher, Cotton, Donne, and all 
their friends. 

But to return to our original quest. I 
found the building numbered 58 to 6^ — an 
ordinary wholesale draper's establishment in 
its external aspect. Nothing outside, cer- 
tainly, would indicate that it possessed the 
slightest historical interest. 

However, I opened the door and went in. 
A young man came forward, and met my 
inquiry regarding the Milton bust with a 
nonplussed air. Somewhat despairingly he 
turned me over to an elderly gentleman, 
who, fortunately, knew all about the matter. 
II 161 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

This man explained to me how a narrow 
close had intercepted Bread Street at the 
point where now the entrance to the ware- 
house stood. This close had houses on both 
sides, and the Sign of the Spread Eagle, 
which was the sign employed by Milton's 
father to designate his abode, stood on the 
side nearest Cheapside. Then this obliging 
gentleman took me up to the third floor, into 
the midst of a wholesale millinery showroom, 
and pointed out to me, up in the right-hand 
corner of the room, on a small bracket above 
the manager's desk, a rather dilapidated 
bust of the great English poet. I was in- 
vited to mount a short ladder to the mana- 
ger's platform in order to read the inscrip- 
tion, which ran something like this : " John 
Milton, the English poet, was born here, De- 
cember 9, 1608." Imagine the sedate Milton 
forced to preside over the frivolities of a mil- 
liner's shop! I was sorely tempted to try 
to get a photograph of that bust, but I am 
162 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

afraid my courage left me; evidently, few- 
people go in search of this particular monu- 
ment, from the way the various members of 
the establishment looked at me! 

Leaving numbers 58 to 63, one may walk 
down Bread Street to the next intersecting 
street, where, in the wall of the corner build- 
ing — a wine and spirit shop — on the 
Bread Street side, there is set a rather hand- 
some bronze tablet, with Milton's head en- 
graved thereon. This tablet marks the site 
of the Church of All Hallows, where John 
Milton the elder married Sarah Jeffrey, and 
where the younger John Milton was baptized. 

On February 12, 1624, the name of John 
Milton was entered upon the roll-books of 
Christ's College, Cambridge. This is old- 
style dating — according to our reckoning it 
would be 1625. I went down to Cambridge, 
wandered about among the colleges, spent 
an hour or so in the beautiful gardens of 
Christ's College, where the famous mulberry 
163 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

tree associated with Milton's name still 
stands, and took a peep at the room which 
the poet is said to have occupied. It is sup- 
posed that this remains very much the same 
as when Milton studied there. Cambridge 
is not, to-day, a wholly attractive town; it 
lacks the atmosphere of Oxford, and pre- 
sents too much the appearance of a prosper- 
ous and up-to-date commercial community. 
Milton did not find it congenial — at least 
from certain of his poems one infers this to 
be true. Apparently he was not inspired by 
the landscapes about him, though one won- 
ders how he failed to enjoy the college gar- 
dens. Whatever may have been the con- 
dition of the gardens then, they are to-day 
remarkably fine. Great trees and broad, 
smooth lawns, and banks of old-fashioned 
flowers — where but in England can one 
find such combinations of color, such grace- 
ful groupings of shrubbery, such back- 
grounds of spreading, ancient trees! 
164 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

However, " The Hymn on the Morning of 
Christ's Nativity '' emanated from Cam- 
bridge — the first important poem that Mil- 
ton produced. Though it remained for him 
to find his greatest lyric inspirations in a bit 
of country-side some twenty miles out from 
London, in the years which followed his 
Cambridge period, and which gave to the 
world "UAllegro,'' "II Penseroso," " Co- 
mus," and " Lycidas." 

John Milton the elder had prospered dur- 
ing the youth of his son, and had taken a 
house at Horton, a village in Buckingham- 
shire, less than a day's journey from Lon- 
don, and within sight of Windsor Castle. 
Leaving Cambridge, young Milton went to 
live at Horton, in the heart of that lovely 
England which embraces Windsor, Stoke 
Poges, Langley, and Slough. 

Here at last was a world to dream in — 
a world of singing birds and humming bees, 
of gently grazing lambs and soft-lowing 
165 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

cattle, of trees and flowers and woodland 
wonders, a world of blue skies and light- 
winged breezes that might well bear a poet's 
soul to heights of ecstasy. 

We did not go to Horton, but took the train 
from London to Langley. The objects of the 
search were a church and a library, and a 
walk of a half-mile from the station brought 
us there. 

Langley Marish, as they call the place, is 
a village of perhaps a dozen houses — the 
quaintest, queerest little houses one's imagi- 
nation can conceive of. Generally speaking, 
they are Elizabethan in style, red brick, with 
tiled roofs and a delightful tendency to curls 
in their exterior outlines. The church and 
the almshouses stand close together, with the 
graveyard between. Nobody knows when 
the church was built — the clerk informed us 
that it was old in the eleventh century! It 
is a beautiful place, hoary with age and 
vine-clad, simple in its interior, but very 
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THE HOMES OF MILTON 

carefully kept. On its south side an addition 
was built, some time in the reign of James I, 
by a Sir John Kederminster, to serve as 
a library. The entrance to this is from the 
outside ; it is separated from the church audi- 
torium — at a point where the Kederminster 
Chapel is built — by an iron railing. You 
enter a small door, and pass into a narrow 
corridor. In front of you is the chapel ; you 
turn to your left, pass through another small 
door, then down two steps into one of the 
most charming little libraries you have ever 
seen. Not more than twelve feet square, the 
room is exquisitely carved and painted. The 
four walls are paneled, with just one window 
on the Windsor side. On the panels beneath 
the ceiling are painted views of Windsor as 
it was in the days when the library was 
erected ; the panels on two of the walls open, 
to discover cupboards filled with ancient 
leather tomes. The insides of these cupboard 
doors are also painted — showing stacks of 
167 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

heavy, age-worn volumes. The whole room 
is wonderfully preserved, even to the great 
Hebrew Bible that stands on a central 
table. 

Two miles away from this library dwelt 
a poet, a young man without definite occu- 
pation, one who wandered at will through 
the surrounding country and discovered in 
his wanderings this queer old room, where, 
in absolute quiet, in the very midst of the 
dead, he might study and think and dream. 
We can imagine that John Milton loved 
Langley, with its picturesque village, its 
solemn little church, its wealth of inspiration 
in old books of the foreign tongues he was 
so competent in using. No doubt this very 
Hebrew Bible which we touched was thumbed 
by him, as, in the dim light of the little room, 
he scanned eagerly its pages, even in that 
day possessing the first ideas of that great 
poem which at a future time he would 

compose. 

i68 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

Glimpses of the country between Horton 
and Langley abound in Milton's poems. 
Listen to this from " L'Allegro/' 

Straight mine eyes hath caught new pleasures 
Whilst the landscape round it measures ; 
Russet lawns and fallows gray, 
Where the nibbling flocks do stray; 
Mountains, on whose barren breast 
The laboring clouds do often rest; 
Meadows trim with daisies pied, 
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; 
Towers and battlements it sees 
Bosomed high in tufted trees, 
Where perhaps some Beauty lies, 
The cynosure of neighboring eyes. 

Or take this night scene from ^^ II 
Penseroso." 

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 
Most musical, most melancholy! 
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, 
I woo to hear thy even-song ; 
And missing thee, I walk unseen 
On the dry smooth-shaven green, 
169 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

To behold the wandering moon 

Riding near her highest noon, 

Like one that had been led astray 

Through the Heaven's wide pathless way, 

And oft, as if her head she bowed, 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft on a plot of rising ground 

I hear the far-off curfew sound 

Over some wide-watered shore, 

Swinging slow with sullen roar; 

Or, if the air will not permit. 

Some still, removed place will fit. 

Where glowing embers through the room 

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom. 

It was while Milton was at Horton that 
his mother died (1637), and that young 
Edward King, a Cambridge chum, was 
drowned in the Irish Channel. This last 
event inspired " Lycidas," one of the few 
great elegiac poems in our language. 

From Horton, Milton went to travel on 

the Continent, whence he returned to take 

a part in the struggle for civil and religious 

liberty that was just beginning in England. 

170 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

Arrived in London, he took up his abode 
in a house in St. Bride's Churchyard. St. 
Bride's stands on Fleet Street, between Lud- 
gate Circus and the Strand. It is one of 
the most beautiful of the smaller London 
churches, and was built by Sir Christopher 
Wren in 1680. The grave of Samuel Rich- 
ardson, the English novelist, is in the center 
aisle of the church — the verger was good 
enough to lift up the carpet in order that 
I might see it. 

The house to which Milton went has dis- 
appeared, but the quiet that pervades the 
churchyard suggests a reason for the choice 
of locality. Here the poet undertook the 
education of his two nephews, and hither, in 
1643, he brought his young wife, Mary 
Powell. Here, too, was enacted that tragedy 
of married life that resulted, at the end of 
three weeks, in the young wife's return to 
her parents — ostensibly for a visit, but the 
visit was merely an excuse for separation. 
171 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

One dislikes, however, the idea that there 
was no happiness in those three weeks in 
the shadow of St. Bride's. Anne Manning, 
in " Mary Powell,'' gives us several glimpses 
of the husband and wife as they dwelt to- 
gether, and what right has one to say that 
these pictures bear no hint of the truth? 
Milton could, no doubt, be tender, as on that 
day, when, for the first time after his mar- 
riage, his pupils resumed their studies. The 
young wife writes : 

After a few Words the boys retired to theire 
Books; and my Husband, taking my Hand, sayd 
in his kindliest manner — " And now I leave my 
sweete Moll to the pleasant Companie of her own 
goode and innocent Thoughtes; and, if she needs 
more, here are both stringed and keyed Instruments, 
and Books both of the older and modern Time, soe 
that she will not find the Hours hang heavie." 

Was it his fault that she would rather 
*' ride upon Clover than read all the books 
that were ever penned " ? And who was to 
172 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

blame that this fair girl, reared in the 
country, wont to breathe the fresh air and 
pick the dewy flowers, should find Lon- 
don stuffy and foot-wearing and generally 
dismal ? 

Mary Milton returned to her home at 
Forest Hill on August 21, 1643. She re- 
mained there until June of 1646, when she 
came up to London and made peace with her 
now thoroughly unhappy spouse. In the 
meantime he had printed his Divorce Doc- 
trine, but, in spite of it, they managed to live 
blissfully for some years, during which time 
she bore him four children, dying at the birth 
of the last. 

There is every reason to suppose that this 
latter portion of their wedded life was one 
of mutual contentment. Milton took a house 
in Barbican, and showed a rare generosity 
in bringing his wife's family to live with 
him when Cromwell's hosts made Forest 
Hill uninhabitable for these rollicking Royal- 
173 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

ists. It must have cost the stern Puritan a 
pang to admit these gay cavahers to his 
daily companionship, but he did it, and Mary 
Milton was grateful. 

It was in the Barbican house that he ex- 
perienced the first great difficulty with his 
eyes. Writes his wife: 

Whenever he looks at a lighted candle, he sees 
a Sort of Iris all about it; and, this Morning, he 
disturbed me by mentioning that a total Darknesse 
obscured everie Thing on the left Side of his Eye, 
and that he even feared, sometimes, he might eventu- 
ally lose the Sight of both. " In which Case," he 
cheerfully sayd, " you, deare Wife, must become 
my Lecturer as well as Amanuensis, and content 
yourself to read to me a World of crabbed Books, 
in Tongues that are not nor need ever be yours, see- 
ing that a Woman has ever enough of her own ! " 

The house in Barbican was destroyed in 
1864, and now to follow the events in Mil- 
ton's career we must take our way to White- 
hall. Whitehall Palace and its grounds oc- 
cupied the greater part of that space which 
174 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

IS now bounded by Trafalgar Square, the 
Thames, the Houses of ParHament, and St. 
James Park. What remains of it stands 
on the right-hand side (going toward the 
Abbey) of the broad street called " White- 
hall," which extends from Trafalgar Square 
to Parliament Street. 

It was from Whitehall that Charles I was 
led out on January 30, 1649, ^^^ beheaded, 
and it was at Whitehall that Cromwell set 
up his Protectorate. Hither came John 
Milton, appointed to be Latin secretary to 
the Commonwealth, a task that was rendered 
increasingly difficult by the gradual blindness 
that was overtaking him. He now moved 
again — to lodgings in Charing Cross, where 
he remained until 1652, when his youngest 
daughter, Deborah, was born. Soon after 
this Mary Milton died. In about that same 
year Milton became totally blind, and retired 
on a pension. With his three small daugh- 
ters he went to live in a house in Petty 
175 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

France (this house is also gone), and in 
1656, needing a mother for his children very 
badly, he married Catherine Woodcock, 
whom he had never seen. She lived a few 
months over a year, then died in bearing a 
daughter. The child also died. 

When the Commonwealth ended, in 1660, 
Milton found a house in Bartholomew Close. 
Here he kept out of the way of the avenging 
forces that were meting out punishment to 
all Cromwellians, and now at last he began 
to dictate " Paradise Lost.'' 

In all these years he had written little 
poetry. His whole time had been devoted to 
political papers and the divorce doctrines. 
He had, in 1646, published a small edition 
of his poems, some in English and some in 
Latin. Now at last, however, he was to take 
up his great work. He moved twice in the 
next two years, and then married, in 1663, 
Elizabeth MinshuU, a frivolous young woman 
thirty years his junior, with whom his 
176 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

daughters quarreled and wrangled in a way 
to make any man's life miserable. 

Not long after this marriage the family 
went to their last London house, in Artil- 
lery Walk, Bunhill Fields, close to the grave- 
yard where Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, and 
Dr. Isaac Watts lie buried. But now came 
the Great Plague, and the Milton women, in 
terror, begged to be taken to the country. 
The poet preferred to remain where he was ; 
a blind man naturally does not like to be in 
a continuous state of uprooting. But his 
protestations were in vain; a house was 
found at Chalfont St. Giles, a pretty village 
twenty-five miles from London, and prepa- 
rations for moving were made. 

This was a time of bustle. Mr. Milton 

must have his books and his organ. The 

latter had to be taken apart in order that it 

could be carted down. One can picture the 

blind old man in the great coach as it ambled 

along the old London road. 
12 177 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

The cottage at Chalfont remains as it was 
when Milton Hved in it. The village has one 
street; the Milton cottage stands at the ex- 
treme end. Its broad brick chimney faces 
the road, and on the roadside wall a tablet 
identifies it with the author of " Paradise 
Lost." There is a luxuriant garden, which 
you enter; the door to the house is on the 
garden side. As you go in you find to your 
right the room in which the poet worked. 
His china is still there, and two old-fashioned 
stools. There are photographs and manu- 
scripts and a few other relics. The several 
pieces of furniture are of his period, but were 
not his. There is a large open fireplace, and 
one knows that the big organ must have 
rested against one of the walls. 

It is a tiny room — one can understand 
the petulance of the blind man when he was 
brought to it. The family must have lived 
in cramped quarters, and the poet must have 
found relief in the sweet-smelHng garden. 
178 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

All around the country is enchanting — 
rolling hills, dense woods, and spreading 
meadow-lands. But these Milton could 
not see — he could only hear the birds 
singing and drink in the fragrance of the 
flowers. 

We can picture him in these days walking 
down the village street, accompanied by his 
wife or one of the daughters, and we can 
hear the neighbors saying: "There goes 
Mr. Milton, the Protector's secretary and the 
writer of poems." Perhaps the same little 
duck pond lay at the entrance to the village, 
just as it does now, a pond over which a soli- 
tary swan holds sway. After all, Chalfont 
was Paradise compared with plague-ridden 
London. But back to London the Miltons 
went, and there, in the house in Bunhill 
Fields, John Milton died, November 8, 1674. 
He was buried in the Church of St. Giles, 
Cripplegate, w^here a bust was erected to him 
in 1793, and in the churchyard of which, 
179 



THE HOMES OF MILTON 

more recently, they have raised up a life-size 
statue in bronze. 

Note: Not all of Milton's houses are mentioned 
in this article. He lived for a time in Aldersgate 
Street, and a question has been raised as to whether 
it was not this house to which he brought his bride. 
But the best authorities state that it was the house 
in St. Bride's Churchyard. He also lived in High 
Holborn, in Red Lion Square, and on Jewin Street. 
Nothing of any of these houses, however, remains. 



i8o 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON: THE 

BEAUTIFUL AND THE 

INCONGRUOUS 



FAIR APRIL GAVE A POET 

(WILLIAM Shakespeare) 

Fairies from ev'ry bud and bloom did pour, 

Titania and Puck and many more; 

They gathered them within a cool, dim glen. 

There to decide the destinies of men. 

This was the Spring, and April now was due — 

Up from the South her herald swallows flew ; 

Soon in their midst the queenly maiden stood. 

In rainbow gown and brightly-flowered hood. 

But ere begin the frolic and the dance, 

Young April, with a smile and sunny glance. 

Announces her bequest unto the earth. 

And names her present as a poet's birth. 

Each year, when April comes along with Spring, 

Vv^hen flowers rise and birds begin to sing, 

One priceless gift to the glad world is made, 

While homage of that world at April's feet is laid. 

And every fairy in the little band, 

In giving of the gift must have a hand. 

So now the mischief-maker, Puck, the sprite, 

Who chases timid moths on starry night, 



And tinkles tiny bells in hidden nooks, 

Then loudly laughs to see the frightened looks — 

Puck, to the poet whom fair April gave, 

Presented meed of wit. — Titania grave. 

The queen of fairies, dainty, gold-haired fay, 

Whose beck all fairies lovingly obey, 

A wondrous fancy proffered for her share, 

Imagination rich and visions fair. 

Each of the others now a quality did add, 

Ah! Poet ne'er before such riches had. 

And for the poet's home they chose a place — 

Fair England — land of Saxons' sturdy race — 

There might the singer drink full deep the stream 

Of Inspiration; there might dreamer dream 

Those dreams that Nature in her bounteous moods 

Does proffer in the glories of her fragrant woods. 



XI 

STRATFORD-ON-AVON: THE 

BEAUTIFUL AND THE 

INCONGRUOUS 

It seems almost superfluous to write a de- 
scription of the birth-town of our greatest 
English poet. We all seem to know it so well 

— its every feature wears a familiar aspect. 
And yet — Americans as we are, and 
hence enthusiastic hero-worshipers — we 
have somehow enveloped Stratford-on-Avon 
in a glamour of sentimental feeling — mild or 
intense according to our various dispositions 

— that has prevented us from establishing 
those finer shades of meaning that make 
Stratford the setting for a romantic drama 
as wonderful in its coloring and action as 
the great plays themselves — and just as 
human. For as a setting this quaint little 

185 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

town and its surrounding countryside must 
be considered, since, had Destiny not decreed 
that one WilHam Shakespeare, by nature a 
poet of quaHty subHme, should be born there, 
the town itself would possess small interest 
to-day for traveler or patriot, whereas, in 
present circumstances, it attracts to itself 
as many as fifty thousand visitors a year. 

The first time I saw Stratford-on-Avon 
was on a rainy day in the summer-time. It 
was in the season when naturally tourists 
would have flocked into Warwickshire, but 
the London trains bore very few passengers 
to either Oxford or Stratford; the little 
station was practically deserted, and we had 
it all our own way on the road up to Henley 
Street. We passed by the memorial drink- 
ing fountain — one of the several American 
memorials that now grace Stratford [in this 
case the gift of the late Mr. George W. 
Childs, of Philadelphia] — and walked to the 
birthplace. No surprise awaits one here — 
i86 




CJ 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

I do not suppose we know the pictures of 
our own capital at Washington any more 
familiarly than we know those of this queer, 
crooked little house — yet this moment was 
one to which we had looked forward for 
years; it was a dream made actual. 

But almost immediately one realizes the 
truth — if you would have Shakespeare in 
Stratford, you must take him with you. 
Imagination must enthrone the poet's spirit 
in this setting which tradition accords the 
historical figure — otherwise he is not to be 
found there. A loyal nation may harbor 
within the four walls that sheltered the poet's 
childhood whatever memorials it pleases — 
his works, models of his monuments, his 
reputed handwritings, pictures and such ar- 
ticles of furniture as excuse can be found 
for ; guides may be deputed to reel off glibly 
the few facts that research can establish as 
true; the elderly lady in the library may 
report with zeal of those things which ^' Wil- 
187 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Ham '' did when he Hved here — her feehng 
for " William '' is so intimately mothering — 
but of Shakespeare himself, his actual per- 
sonality, there is nothing. True, William 
Shakespeare was born in this house on April 
23, 1 564. Here he lived as a boy — but how ? 
Imagination, loving imagination, must sup- 
ply the details. A tall lad, a slender one, 
supple of limb, lofty of forehead, merry-faced 
but grave-eyed — so this boy should have 
been. No cleaner than his fellow urchins 
in the Stratford streets, no more fastidious, 
no better where behavior was concerned, but 
a bright boy surely, cjuick at his lessons in 
the little grammar school — still shown to 
visitors — quick, too, in his play, and mis- 
chievous as Puck, fond of escapade, an ar- 
dent listener where any group of townsmen 
discussed politics or war, a keen observer 
of those eccentricities which differentiate 
character, an eager reader when any book — ■ 
especially Plutarch's '' Lives " — was of- 




H 




STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

fered. We can see him stretched at full 
length on the floor beside the fireplace, read- 
ing and dreaming, his fancy roaming in the 
fields of poetic thought, his mind engaged 
ever with those perplexing problems that 
make life such a mystery. 

He must have loved the little garden back 
of the house — he could not have helped it ; 
he must have loved a cool plunge in the 
Avon, or an hour's drifting over its smooth 
waters. What a world that forest of Arden 
must have been to him, peopled as it was with 
fairies and robbers and exiled lords, ladies, 
and clowns in motley. Some of the people 
in '' As You Like It '' he may really have 
met; we are sure he conversed freely with 
Titania and Oberon and encouraged Puck 
in his pranks. At the Stratford taverns he 
must have seen and talked with men like 
Bottom and his fellows. Irresponsible he 
probably was, but his very irresponsibility 
was laying up for him treasures without 
189 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

number, and certainly without price. All 
this strange assortment of people he carried 
home with him, into that little house, to that 
fireside, into those very places where now 
their pictured images hang on the walls, 
whither their most famous expositors have 
gone as pilgrims, but from which their cre- 
ator, loath to intrude his personality among 
them, has in the succeeding years withdrawn, 
leaving a happy hunting-ground for admir- 
ers, a stock in trade for later generations of 
awed countrymen who have found it con- 
venient to cultivate a taste and an enthusi- 
asm for Avon's bard. 

The visitor to Stratford knows well the 
story of Anne Hathaway — or at least, he 
or she knows it as well as such a matter of 
mystery can be known. At any rate, we 
are all willing to spend a part of our time in 
a trip to Shottery, a mile out from the town, 
where, in a picturesque spot, a vine-covered, 
hedge-surrounded cottage, quite as pretty as 
190 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

the typical English cottage is wont to be, and 
supposedly the home of that shadowy figure, 
Anne, is shown as the scene of a most in- 
teresting episode, Shakespeare's courtship. 
It were just as well for us to enter this quaint, 
small cottage in a spirit of whole-souled 
faith — the skeptic had better omit Shottery 
from his itinerary — it might be well to for- 
tify one's self by reading Miss Sterling's 
generously romantic '' Shakespeare's Sweet- 
heart," for in fact there is nothing very au- 
thentic about Anne Hathaway's relation to 
this particular cottage, though its English 
wooded prettiness suggests an attraction 
for a young man of poetic temperament ; the 
wide settle by the fire would indeed have 
been an ideal courting place, and the country 
round about is just that kind of country 
wherein lovers, seeking atmosphere con- 
genial to their own exalted spirits, might 
roam at ease and find themselves addition- 
ally inspired. It is all so charmingly primi- 
191 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

tive that one wants Shakespeare to have 
wooed Anne here with ardent soul and im- 
patient feehng; and where Shakespeare the 
man is concerned, one may have what one 
wants simply by seeing and believing. 

Shakespeare married Anne — that much 
requires no exercise of imagination; he 
also went up to London — without his wife 
and presumably because he was not a model 
citizen, but an impulsive, rebellious, and dar- 
ing young man. We care nothing for his 
offense against Sir Thomas Lucy — it was so 
ordained perhaps that he might be forced into 
that new field in which his powers were to 
ripen and bear fruit. Stratford is impartial 
where London enters its claim — for he loved 
Stratford so dearly that he came back there 
to stay when he had conquered fame and 
fortvme. Stratford admired the imposing 
Londoner, no matter how much or how little 
she may have appreciated the poet and dram- 
atist. At New Place he was a personage 
192 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

— what a pity that nothing of this house re- 
mains save the foundations ! — and he con- 
tinues to be a personage in every part of 
Stratford, even to the old church, where 
alone, of all the places, as Washington Ir- 
ving remarks — and we agree to the remark 

— his spirit may really be found, for here he 
lies buried. 

But before visiting Trinity Church the 
traveler naturally turns from the site of New 
Place to the Shakespeare Memorial close at 
hand. This memorial is in itself a most inter- 
esting building: as a mark of commemora- 
tion to Shakespeare it is appropriate. It 
overlooks the Avon ; from its tower one has 
a beautiful view of the church and the coun- 
try around. It is nearly surrounded by 
gardens and lawns, in the midst of which, 
on the side toward the church and also over- 
looking the river, stands what is probably 
the most beautiful Shakespearean statue that 
has been erected, that by Lord Ronald 
13 193 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Gower. It is a statue so well known that it 
needs no description, but it inspires the feel- 
ing of a presence when one stands before it. 
The pose is that of a poet and thinker, just 
such a one as might have been inspired amid 
such surroundings. For in the neighbor- 
hood of the memorial, when no festival is on, 
there is the peaceful quiet of a woodland 
shelter: the Avon scarcely murmurs, the 
trees barely quiver, only the birds singing 
make a sound. Shakespeare himself would 
have loved — doubtless did love — this spot. 
Inside the Memorial Building there are 
three centers of interest — the library, the 
theater and the picture gallery. In the li- 
brary the Shakespearean student may browse 
at ease — the relics are in no way remark- 
able, but the collection of Shakespeareana is 
superb and superbly arranged. The theater 
is a tiny place, but splendidly equipped — to 
see the plays themselves on this stage is a 
treat, without doubt; the art gallery has 
194 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

many pictures that call for the traveler's at- 
tention. Here is the Droeshout portrait, and 
here are many paintings that portray scenes 
from the plays, a number of them showing 
famous actors in the principal roles. One 
series of pictures gave me personally a great 
deal of pleasure, and that was the series of 
water-colors, hung low round the walls, pic- 
turing scenes from the life of the poet. 
Purely imaginary these scenes are, of course 
— an imaginative presentment based on the 
few facts really known and on some of the 
legends. But the sympathy and appreciation 
and understanding that the artist has shown 
make this a collection that one remembers. 

It is but a short distance from the Memo- 
rial Building to the Stratford Church. The 
avenue of limes that leads from the road to 
the entrance on the north side has had many 
words of enthusiastic description. Every- 
thing is so still ; Nature is close and intimate ; 
and the very spirits of the dead seem to 
195 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

hover in the woodland shadows. A sense 
of agedness compels one to a recognition of 
the passing of the centuries ; the tree trunks 
are overgrown with thick and ancient moss. 
Architecturally the church is beautiful, both 
without and within. One enters it rever- 
ently, and reverently likewise contemplates 
its monuments and tombs. The Shake- 
speares are buried in the chancel, inside the 
altar rails. Here lie the poet, his wife, his 
daughter and her husband, and Thomas 
Nash, the husband of his granddaughter. 
Rectangular slabs of stone mark each grave, 
irregularly placed. The inscriptions are 
known to everyone, especially that on the 
poet's own tomb, the famous admonition 
which he himself composed, and which has 
kept even the most audacious from disturbing 
his remains. 

The monument to Shakespeare is set high 
in the wall; its colors are dim, but its out- 
lines are distinct. One is not instinctively so 
196 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

well pleased with this portrayal of the poet's 
features, though it is probably the most 
authentic of any bust, since supposedly it was 
modeled from the death-mask. However, it 
glimpses the prosperous owner of New Place, 
the retired dramatist — imagination must 
again supply the links between the poet and 
the well-trained, comfortably wealthy citi- 
zen of Stratford, home from his adventures 
in the town and settled down to retirement. 
This monument in Trinity Church is not a 
monument to the author of '^ A Midsummer 
Night's Dream " or " Venus and Adonis '' ; 
of that Shakespeare, the poet Milton might 
well and appropriately ask: 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 
The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 
Under a star-ypointing pyramid? 
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? 
Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 
197 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art, 
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book 
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, 
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, 
Dost make tis marble with too much conceiving, 
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, 
That kings for such a tomb might wish to die. 

No, Stratford-on-Avon is an artificially 
developed landmark. In it much has been 
made out of little. Each shop is of effort all 
compact to do honor to the poet that men 
from afar have come to seek signs of; each 
hotel is given over to ministering to the 
tastes of those who deign to honor the town 
with their presence because an immortal 
singer once lived there; but the Stratford 
shopkeeper is a commercial being at best, 
and the Stratford hotel-keeper more than 
average wise. 

Yet, with it all, the town is charming with 
an Old World charm, the very essence of 
beauty is in its environment. We may need 
198 



STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

to take Shakespeare with us into these his 
once native haunts, but, having taken him, 
v^e shall not come away unrefreshed or un- 
invigorated. And our immediate contact 
with those phases and aspects of Nature that 
the poet so loved will annihilate our feeling 
for the incongruities and disproportions that 
have inflicted themselves upon us during our 
sojourn, whether brief or long. 



199 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN 
IMPRESSIONISM 



XII 

PARIS — A SKETCH IN 
IMPRESSIONISM 

To those who have been to Paris but once, 
the city remains, in retrospect, a dreamhke 
experience, and the hazy glamour which 
softens the details of a vision tints and 
glisters the ever-changing shadows of the 
great city as they pass and repass with the 
tides of memory vivified by imagination. 

Paris is a city of light, but the glare of its 
lights is not without an eclipse of its shad- 
ows ; it is a city of laughter, but its laughter 
readily melts into tears ; it is a city of good- 
nature, but its good-nature can on the instant 
degenerate into brutishness. 

But more than lights and shadow^s, laugh- 
ter and tears, good humor and ill, is the 
movement, the vivacity of Paris. One sees 
203 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

it as one sees the moving film pictured on 
the screen; numberless variations and light- 
ning rapid changes go to make up the in- 
dividual scene, and with all the speed of the 
highly dramatic each scene shifts and fades 
away. 

Paris is essentially a city of crowds and 
a city of noises. Even Strauss would have 
much ado to find a sufficient number of kinds 
of instruments with which to reproduce its 
multitude of sounds. An enormous canvass 
would scarcely comprehend the mighty mass 
of individually different figures which haunt 
the boulevards in the evenings, and line the 
pavements before the cafes at all times. 
Countless living human beings pass and 
mingle in the life that fills Parisian streets 
to bursting, but the shadowy ghosts of as 
many countless thousands dead press be- 
tween and among, before and behind these 
living figures. 

Paris by day, in clear weather, presents 
204 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

a riot of color under a deep, blue sky; Paris 
by night shows an electrical display that no 
brilliancy of the heavens can rival. 

But by day or by night Paris is essentially 
a city of artificialities. Its landscapes are 
man-made ; its boulevards and parks and its 
gorgeous gardens reveal themselves as the 
products of an artistry that is as marvelous 
in its technique, as undeniable in its appre- 
ciation of the beautiful, as it is uninspired 
by any nobler purpose than to minister to 
the needs of the senses of those who dwell 
with it. God in nature has no revealment 
in Parisian green places; the silence of the 
night under the sweep of a star-lit sky will 
thrill no soul. 

Paris is dedicated to the joy of the liv- 
ing; enthusiastically it raises its monuments 
to the glory of its dead. Paris leaves little 
to the imagination from Napoleon's Tomb 
in the Invalides to Pere La Chaise with its 
conglomeration of memorials. 
205 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

The Paris of to-day exhibits the Paris of 
yesterday with the pride of an artist display- 
ing a masterpiece. In a wealth of museums 
she memorializes her art, her history, her 
literature, presenting as object-lessons tan- 
gible remnants and representations of the 
fames she wishes to celebrate. The visible 
marks of her triumphs decorate her streets; 
her achievements are recorded in monuments 
of every description and of every degree and 
grade of beauty. 

So rich in choice examples of valuable 
relics and exquisite memorials is Paris that 
the visitor with a limited time at his or her 
command has no small difficulty in deciding 
upon the places most desirable and most im- 
portant to see. There are Notre Dame, the 
Pantheon, the Invalides, the Madeleine, the 
Place de la Concorde, the Place de la Bastille, 
the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Opera 
House, the Champs Elysees, the Bois de Bou- 
logne — so many places, and one may not 

206 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

nor would wish to miss any of them. Most 
of them are prominent in a bird's-eye view — 
the Champs Elysees cries invitation in the 
sunshine ; the InvaHdes' gilded dome beckons 
insistingly; all known legendary, historic, 
artistic, and literary lore compel eagerness 
in the direction of the Isle de la Cite or to the 
region of the long galleries of the Louvre, 
or again to the broad expanses of the Place 
de la Concorde. 

Visit Notre Dame when there is little or 
no sunlight. It is a cathedral best experi- 
enced in dimness. Do not go to see, but to 
feel; rest quietly, and the soft drone of 
a progressing service will steal soothingly 
through the vast spaces ; out of the shadows 
gradually but surely will emerge the splen- 
did details of the great, old church ; you will 
seem thousands of miles away from the bustle 
of life, and a peace such as one cannot know 
in the garishness of daylight will come upon 
you. Later you may visit the treasure store, 
207 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

but it is unimportant as compared with the 
precious moments spent among the dusky 
shadows, when the soul drinks in its fill of 
the strength and beauty of a holy quietness. 
To learn about Notre Dame read Victor 
Hugo; read first, then go, and keep mind 
and heart open for impressions. 

The Pantheon is purely pagan ; absolutely 
unemotional. Save for Rodin's " Thinker " 
before the portals, there is no touch of the 
sublime attached to the edifice. Coldly beau- 
tiful, the frescoes of Puvis de Chavannes 
delicately tint the high walls; of spirit the 
place is empty. Far below, where Paris 
buries her illustrious dead in a series of elab- 
orated vaults, one passes by the places where 
rest Hugo, Rousseau, and Voltaire, but 
the emotion is like that experienced by the 
tomb of Napoleon — an intellectual admira- 
tion for perfect arrangements and artistic 
marbles — no more. 

To know a thrill one seeks the Louvre and 
208 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

the Luxembourg. Here are dreams come 
true ! For here one may stand and gaze in- 
definitely before " Monna Lisa/' before Ra- 
phael's "St. Michael/' before Murillo's 
'' Immaculate Conception." 

Time is no more, nor are centuries to be 
counted; realities fade into oblivion while 
the soul absorbs the perfectness of the purity 
that makes Leonardo's masterpiece an in- 
carnation of genius, and lifts high the spirit 
on the clouds that float so caressingly about 
the exquisite figure of the mother of God. 

On the way down stairs one stops en- 
thralled before the lightsome poise of the 
*' Winged Victory of Samothrace," a figure 
so wonderfully moulded that it seems more 
spirit than marble. And then, down at the 
end of that long, shadowed corridor, lined 
on either side by innumerable relics of Greek 
and Roman art in sculpture, a white figure 
stands forth from a black background. The 
*' perfect woman " — the " Venus de Milo " 
14 209 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

■ — will bear no written description ; one must 
see it to realize the miracle of its power — a 
beauty that hurts in that it is so lovely. 

The Louvre has treasures inexhaustible; 
its pictures and sculptures are but two de- 
partments in this immense museum where 
everything that is art has its representation. 

The Luxembourg speaks nothing for the 
ancient — it emphasizes the evolution of the 
modern art. Here Whistler, Cottet, Moreau, 
Constant, Puvis de Chavannes, and Fantin 
Latour have some of their noblest efforts 
exhibited, while the Rodin sculptures form 
of themselves a priceless collection. 

Revolutionary Paris speaks in accents of 
woe from the eminence of the Place de la 
Bastille, and from the w^hite asphalts of the 
Place de la Concorde. Gay as may be the 
life that now trips lightly through these 
broad, brightly beautiful squares, the Col- 
umn of the Fourteenth of July cries blood 
to the heavens, and the atrocities of the guil- 

2IO 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

lotine stain the pavements before the ObeHsk: 
blood-red. Imagination becomes a prey to 
historic fact as one gazes on these monu- 
ments of the travail out of which a Republic 
was born, and not all the floods of all the 
Seines that flow can wash away the stains 
of noble and innocent blood shed lustfully 
in Liberty's name! 

As I write this chapter Paris is but awak- 
ing from a period of darkness and bereave- 
ment. Her overflowing river has devastated 
her city — the Champs Elysees, the Isle de 
la Cite, the regions of the Louvre, the vicin- 
ity of the Madeleine are but now emerging 
from an overwhelming tide. Paris has been 
sitting in mourning, waiting for the waters 
to subside; at the first intimation that the 
danger has passed by, the whole city dances 
forth, courageously garmented, to take up 
its temporary abandoned frivolities, and to 
forget its prayers in the gayest, most riotous 
songs. 

211 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

I cite the episode because it reveals just 
what I hope to convey through the medium 
of this impression. Paris, " a city of 
moods," might be used as appropriately de- 
scriptive, for the mood is the thing in this 
great, white, wonderful city, which men 
have builded for the satisfaction of their 
nationally artistic-loving eye, which they 
have so many times degraded in their mad 
thirst for revenge upon opposing powers, in 
which kings have risen, have fallen, and 
have risen again, with a rapidity as senseless 
as it has been startling, in which republics 
have been born, have been throttled till they 
died, have been decently or indecently buried, 
until Revolution has become a byword and 
Riot a logical sequence to any petty dissatis- 
faction. Alternate light and darkness, alter- 
nate heights and abysses, alternate blood- 
sheddings and peace-makings, — this is 
Paris, beautiful, kaleidoscopic, wonderfully 
colored, marvelously animated Paris: the 

212 



PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM 

city of statues and gardens, and music and 
laughter, where victory carries to sublime 
heights of enthusiasm on the crest of the 
wave that has risen from the deeps of dark- 
ness and defeat. 



213 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINE- 

BLEAU: TOMBS OF A DEAD 

GLORY 



THE GOLDEN AGE 

Pan by the stream with his reed plays 
Through days that are golden and long; 

Wood-nymphs glide bright through the tree- 
maze, 
Hear snatches of rapturous song — 

Shepherds a-dreamy and sad-eyed, 
Their flocks straying far and away, 

Lie in the shade on the hill-side, 
Hear love's plaintive note in the lay — 

Dryads in forests a-dancing, 

To music of birds and of stream; 

Diana's arrows a-glancing. 

See Apollo's answering gleam — 

Fleet-footed deer through the forest 
Are driven by Puck's mirthful fays; 

Running and leaping with huge zest, 
See flowers their sleepy eyes raise — 

These were the days of real romance, 

Of dryads' and fairies' dance; 
Days of delight and joyous song. 

Days that were olden and golden and long ! 



XIII 

VERSAILLES AND FONTAINE- 

BLEAU: TOMBS OF A DEAD 

GLORY 

There is a certain element of the grotesque 
in the silent emptiness of the French royal 
palaces, those magnificent edifices which, 
having passed through every kind of politi- 
cal change and vicissitude, have gradually 
fallen to the plane of mere show-places, the 
proud display of which is not a little incon- 
gruous in the light of what the republic 
stands for as opposed to the monarchical 
glory that these sumptuous one-time resi- 
dences commemorate. 

On the other hand, to still the echoes that 
even yet reverberate through the long halls 
217 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

and the lofty salons of Versailles and Fon- 
tainebleau; to destroy the images that im- 
mediately take form before the mind's eye 
as one contemplates the more intimate sur- 
roundings of the illustrious Bourbons and 
the great Napoleon, would be to consign to 
oblivion much of France's most prideful 
history, and to cut out from the book of re- 
membrance many of her most fascinating 
personalities and most interesting charac- 
ters. To inhabit the favorite seat of the Sun- 
King's court with the paraphernalia of de- 
mocracy would offend a taste far less fine 
than that of the least educated Frenchman, 
whereas to hand over these relics of a golden 
age to a private care that would restrict their 
value as sources of a public enjoyment would 
be to commit an indiscretion that the world 
at large would not soon forgive. 

A more than casual contrast forces itself 
upon one in going over Versailles and Fon- 
tainebleau. At Versailles there is little to 
218 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

appeal to the poetic imagination; at Fon- 
tainebleau the heart of the poet is more than 
rejoiced and satisfied. 

Versailles typifies man^s triumph over 
Nature; Fontainebleau shows Nature pre- 
dominant over man's ambitions. The over- 
whelming desire of the fourteenth Louis to 
achieve the highest point in the development 
of the decorative has a monument in Ver- 
sailles ; the same methods employed at Fon- 
tainebleau would have defeated their own 
purposes. 

To-day Versailles basks in the brilliant 
afterglow of a great but past glory. The 
stupendousness of its conception is worthy 
a line of mighty potentates; its success, in 
so far as it accomplished the task set, has 
immortalized the landscape architect who 
obeyed the king's command. Only a Louis, 
surrounded by every luxury that even the 
most practiced voluptuary could imagine, 
would have planned on so extravagant a 
219 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

scale; only a prodigal would have had the 
courage to expend the immense fortunes out 
of which Versailles, a great king's great and 
brilliant residence for a whole court, was. 
evolved. Not even a river was exempt from 
the demand of the king's will. A deflected 
course was nothing if it ministered to the 
larger elaboration of the details in a mag- 
nificent scheme. 

Versailles to-day is not, of course, Ver- 
sailles as Louis le Grande builded it. Later 
Bourbons added to it and diminished; Na- 
poleon would scarcely have been satisfied 
had his personality not had its reflection in 
some changes made in the palaces he so 
coolly adapted to his own uses. 

We approach Versailles with more than 
a little conscious curiosity in our attitude. 
The familiarity assured us, through the me- 
dium of historical works, with many of the 
most important personages and episodes 
associated with the palace and its environs, 

220 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

has made our interest in its relics and its 
memories doubly sure. The brilliancy of the 
days of the Montespan, the triumphs of de 
Maintenon, the reigns of the Pompadour and 
Du Barry are vivid patches in a bright tap- 
estry that unrolls before one through the 
corridors and chambers of the fine old cha- 
teau and the Trianons. Darker places in the 
picture indicate the careers of Louis XVI 
and his proud queen, the Austrian Marie 
Antoinette; of the beautiful and innocent 
Elizabeth, and the two pretty children — the 
one such a sad little Dauphin, later a sadder 
little king — whose young lives were thrown 
into a turmoil on that day when the stones 
of Versailles rang shrill under the impact of 
mobbish feet, and the shrieks of mad women 
mingled with the hoarser cries of men and 
the dull boom of a thousand drums as the 
starving hordes from Paris poured into the 
great court and demanded the king's ap- 
pearance before them. The Ghost of the 

221 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

Grand Monarch must surely have danced 
with rage on that dark day, though better 
had it wept in agony to see its proud suc- 
cessor brought to such a pass through those 
very extravagances and the employment 
of licenses which had made Revolution 
inevitable. 

Peace came to Versailles only after sore 
trials. Hellish Fury chased the golden 
Phoebus from his court of Sunlight, and the 
fiery chariot has been seen no more before 
the rich portals of the palace. 

Silence reigns where chimy laughter mel- 
odied the dances and where soft voices 
whispered eager words of love among the 
shadowed recesses of the gardens. 

Like a great, beautiful tomb, skilfully 
architectured, lies Versailles, a carefully- 
tended, conscientiously-maintained memorial. 
Swept, brushed, regularly garnished, its 
fine old furniture, its rare tapestries, its 
magnificent pictures, its splendid frescoes 

222 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

enshrine the memories of those who are dead, 
for the glory that made the palace, that in- 
habited it and gave it life and song, humor 
and pathos, comedy and tragedy, has passed 
forever by, and France cannot recall it, would 
not if she could, though pride demands the 
knee before this symbol of achievement, a 
temple of triumph to kings whose " divine 
rights " were maintained indisputably, whose 
conquests were the envy of the nations, 
whose personal influence gathered around 
them the greatest that genius could attain 
or offer, whose private lives were romances 
as colorful as they were scandalous, but out 
of whose decline was wrought a brilliant 
empire and later a republic of power to 
keep pace with the demands that democracy 
has levied on the later centuries. 

The tomb of a dead glory — Versailles, 

the beautifully environed: so one may call 

it. It is not enough to erect a superb edifice ; 

it must have appropriate and artistic sur- 

223 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

foundings. When Louis XIV set about es- 
tablishing a court at Versailles, he planned 
these splendid gardens, and he had worked 
out for him so elaborate a system of foun- 
tains that, to accomplish their playing, a 
river had to be turned from its course. The 
fountains at Versailles play once a week only 
— fortunate the traveler who goes there on 
that day. 

Versailles in the sunlight is hot but pic- 
turesque. Its broad walks give a miniature 
Paris; its avenues of trees are almost hide- 
ously symmetrical. Nature has been forced 
to assume certain aspects and shapes, cone- 
trimmed trees, close-cropped shrubs and 
boxed bushes make of the gardens a series 
of regularly devised walks and angularly 
shadowed promenades, with gorgeous foun- 
tains as center-pieces alternating with ten- 
derly nurtured flower beds. Artificial hills 
and slopes, cool picturesque grottoes for 
resting-places, long vistas of white walks 
224 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

closely hedged: these are features of the 
broad acres that spread themselves before 
and around the beautiful old chateau, and in 
whose midst rest the Great and Petit Tri- 
anons, in themselves superb palaces on a 
smaller scale. 

At a set time, late in the afternoon, the 
first tall spires of water shoot upward from 
the mouths of the fountains. Higher they 
grow and higher, until they break and fall in 
glistening spray that settles into cream foam 
over the top of the basin's pool of water. 
Hundreds of fountains, in many varieties of 
design, all merrily sing as they spout, burst- 
ing into rainbow colors as they splash and 
sparkle in the sunlight. All over the grounds 
you can see the slender streams rising; in 
the great Fountain of the Sun one has a gor- 
geous spectacle. Here the water escapes 
over the surface of a gilded cascade, the 
central streams rising to lofty heights in the 
air, lower streams supporting them at the 
15 225 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

bases. Crested waves ripple down the sides ; 
the great basin sings and scintillates as the 
water gathers and rises to the top of its 
bright, broad rim. 

To see the Versailles fountains playing is 
to behold what money and labor can contrive 
to make possible. As the brilliancy of a 
sunny day gradually passes, and the hour 
of sunset draws near, the fountains flowing 
send a cool refreshment through the air, the 
merry swirl seems to grow softer ; the waters 
murmur soothingly as one by one they cease 
to play. Shadowy now the green aisles and 
dim the more sheltered corners — the splen- 
dor of the day dies even as the reign of the 
Sun King died years ago at Versailles. And 
the sweet stillness and peace of the dead rest 
around and about the gardens of the chateau 
as twilight casts its silvery veil over the 
mausoleum of France's brightest and most 
enchanting glory — dead. 



226 




. ^^,«f 



VERSAILLES • AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

The surroundings of Fontainebleau pre- 
sent a very different appearance from those 
of Versailles. The deep inspiration of the 
Scotch lake district resides in the heart of 
the mighty and justly famous forest. This 
is indeed a bit of God's own country for the 
artist to paint, for the poet to sing about; 
and the beauty of the chateau which the first 
Francis built on the edge of the forest justi- 
fies the thousands of pilgrimages which are 
made to Fontainebleau year after year. 

The gardens at Fontainebleau are tracts 
of the forest which encroach upon the palace 
domains. The trees retain their natural 
sweep and droopings. The chateau is ex- 
quisite in architectural detail, from its great 
horseshoe-shaped staircase to its beautiful 
small summer-house in the center of the 
bright lake, where Napoleon was wont to 
secrete himself when matters of state de- 
manded his undivided attention. Within the 
palace the arrangements are superb, less gor- 
227 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

geous than at Versailles, but choicer in that 
their splendor has more of refinement. The 
royal chapel is perfect in its appointments; 
the long succession of rooms in which the 
French kings have lived and died present 
a wonderful array of fine, polished floors, 
richly carved and decorated ceilings, panels 
hung with famous Gobelin tapestries, furni- 
ture of the fine beauty of Bourbon days and 
the period of the First Empire. 

Here in Fontainebleau Louis XIV set up 
his " King's Conscience," the ever enigmatic 
but all-powerful Maintenon; here in Fon- 
tainebleau Pope Pius VII was detained by 
Napoleon until the Emperor's will was ac- 
complished; here in Fontainebleau Napo- 
leon signed his abdication on a table that still 
bears the mark of his dagger as in sudden, 
uncontrollable anger he struck out with it. 
Marie Antoinette luxuriated in Fontaine- 
bleau, and Marie Louise gave birth to the 
little King of Rome in one of these cham- 
228 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

bers. The brightness of Fontainebleau was 
restored by Napoleon III, and to him is due 
the Httle theater that is so interesting an 
addition to the chateau. 

But Fontainebleau is not entirely dedi- 
cated to this palace of kings. The visitor 
going there can dispose of the chateau and 
its most immediate vicinity in a short space 
of time. The rare features of Fontaine- 
bleau are to be found in its forest, that vast 
stretch of magnificent woodland to which 
painters from all over the world have gone 
to seek inspiration, and which Watteau and 
Cottet and Millet, Morland, and Constable 
have immortalized on canvases that are 
priceless. But the forest of Fontainebleau 
has in it that element of the eternal which 
lingers with any of Nature's larger manifes- 
tations so long as the hand of man is with- 
held from demolishing them. Miles and 
miles of trees are here — their lower trunks 
hidden in fern bracken, slender trees, tall 
229 



VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

trees, lithe saplings and broad-based patri- 
archs whose spreading branches roof the 
forest with a fine lacework of green foliage. 
Soft mosses clinging, creeping; vines twin- 
ing and intertwining; here and there a 
purple patch of heather, or a dell is bright- 
ened by wild flowers. Rifts of sunshine 
filter through the vaulted roofings and 
glimpses of blue sky grow vivid in the 
sunlight. This indeed was one among Na- 
ture's first and greatest cathedrals, and 
prince and peasant alike have worshipped 
therein. 

On all hands one sees pictures in Fon- 
tainebleau's forest, and the visitor rides out 
from the immense tract with a mind full of 
entrancing natural masterpieces. 

The beauties of Fontainebleau will sur- 
vive whatever political changes may ring 
through France. Palaces may be builded and 
may crumble away; kings may be lifted up 
and deposed; emperors may storm through 
230 




:^;.K-^?m^^^ 









i^h 




VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU 

meteoric careers, and presidents may come 
and go; but Fontainebleau stands for the 
best that France has to give, and its gemUke 
chateau takes its place with the rarely lovely 
chateaux of the Touraine region to symbol- 
ize the wonders of a past that is buried but 
not forgotten, in that man and Nature have 
joined hands to commemorate it by raising 
up in its honor monuments that testify nobly 
to brave deeds and heroic undertakings, the 
conquests, the triumphs, political, social, ar- 
tistic, and literary which have made the 
pages of French history more colorful and 
romantic than those of any other nation in 
the world. 



231 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS: THREE 
FRAGMENTS 



SHADOWS AT SEA 

And now the Sun, his golden glory spent, 

Withdraws his shafts of light, and hides from 

view; 
Long curtain clouds of gray fall gently to. 

Night into camp the hosts of day has sent. 

As if to darken all the world he meant ; 

But here and there a streak of rose or blue 
From pearly deeps comes faintly filtering through, 

The new pale moon begins a slow ascent. 

Mid-ocean takes unto itself new bounds; 

The growing shadows, range on range, pile high ; 
It is as if the waters met a wooded strand, 
A strip of picturesque, mysterious land, 
A weird, still world that ships pass silent by. 
While hearts thrill deep to catch faint spirit sounds. 



XIV 

WHEN THE SEA STORMS: THREE 
FRAGMENTS 

This record of impressions would scarcely 
be complete without some description of the 
two unusually severe storms which it was 
my good fortune to experience on the trip 
about which I am writing, the one on the 
English Channel when we crossed from 
Calais to Dover in the month of September, 
and the other in mid-ocean as the Maiire- 
tania came westward a little later in the 
same month. 

Calais was in the thrall of a big gale when 

we arrived there in the afternoon; there 

had been shipwrecks during the day, and it 

was doubtful if the boats could make a land- 

235 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

ing at Dover. On the pier the wind raged; 
the waters lashed the holdings, and with 
every sweep of the wildly dashing waves a 
shower of fine spray spread over the landing- 
stage. The turbine boat did not get in, but 
a side-wheeler was made ready for the pas- 
sage, and sometime around four o'clock the 
passengers boarded the vessel to cross over to 
Dover. For all who wished to stay on deck 
rubber coats were provided, and chairs were 
drawn well back into the more sheltered 
places; then the boat pushed ofif, and in a 
few moments we had taken the plunge into 
the fury of the storm. It was a glorious 
sight- — gray skies everywhere; the day 
dying; in the west a faint, pink afterglow 
left in the track of the sinking sun. The 
dark-shadowed clouds hung low over the 
waters ; the great waves rose high and broke 
with roars of thunder, their crest waters 
flung far as the wind caught up the scatter- 
ing spray points and hurled them through 
236 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

the air. Now gray, now green, now a deep 
blue-purple, the tides of the channel swirled 
and eddied, the dull throbs, the noisy rushes, 
the hoarse murmurs of the furious seas vying 
in depth and intensity of sound with the 
sighs and moans, the high shrieks and angry 
growls of the maddened wind. 

Little by little the gray sky deepened to 
blackness; the waters took on the hues of 
night; Dover's cliffs showed dull and gray 
against a deepening twilight, and here and 
there far lights blinked in the darkness. 
With her decks running water in full 
streams, her passengers spray-soaked and 
weary, the paddle-boat drew into the dock. 
The wind had subsided somewhat — the 
worst of the gale was past, but the memory 
of the rock, the sway, the plunges of the 
vessel in that seething torrent of a storm- 
bound channel will remain with her passen- 
gers for many a long day. 



237 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

On the fourth day out from Liverpool, 
the Mauretania ran head-on into a storm. 
Morning found the biggest ocean-liner ply- 
ing the high seas, lunging, plunging, stag- 
gering through a sea that was frenzied by 
the great strokes of a mighty gale. It is 
a tribute to that most magnificent of Na- 
ture's giant children, the Atlantic Ocean, 
that in the manifestation of her superb 
strength she can play, as a child plays with 
a ball, with a vessel of the height and 
breadth and depth of the great Cunarder. 
Steady as the Mauretania is, even in a com- 
paratively rough sea, her steadiness perforce 
deserted her when the deep undercurrents 
of a storm-whipped sea heaved her huge 
bulk up and forward, this way and that, as 
the high winds came shrilly whistling around 
her mastheads. 

Daylight brought a slight change to the 
wind. We were running with her, and the 
great vessel's speed was sufficient to outdis- 
238 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

tance her. The sun gave a faint glow of 
Hght in the eastern heavens, otherwise the 
sky remained a dull, mist-veiled slate color, 
against the far horizon-line of which the 
broad sea spread a darkly speckled green. 

Sitting on the deck, on the more protected 
side of the vessel, one had a magnificent 
view of the restless, demon-haunted waters. 
The waves rose mountain-high, as if the 
forces of an army of Titans were employed 
in heaving them heavenward. The great 
boat rode high on the uplifted waters, and a 
deep, deep valley, smoothly green, stretched 
down and downward far below the sky-line. 
Then as the waters subsided, the boat slowly 
sank; great mountains of water gathered 
and rose, their sides foam-flecked, their 
crests white as with frozen snow — alpine in 
their height and grandeur as they cleaved 
the sky. Then with a rush and roar, as of 
an avalanche slipping, their great summits 
would break and fall, rolling, sliding, tum- 
239 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

bling till they mingled in a green-blue pool 
over the surface of which rings of froth 
formed by the spreading foam lay in mottled 
beauty. 

Only in a mid-ocean storm, with the howl 
of the wind and the roar of the waters in 
your ears, with the sight of a wholly uncon- 
trolled and uncontrollable sea driven to reck- 
lessness by the desperate onslaughts of winds 
and the deep rebellion of undercurrents be- 
fore your eyes, can you realize the im- 
mensity, the cruel relentlessness of some of 
Nature's forces, against which man's hand 
is but an inert, useless instrument, and in the 
direction of which man's brain proves but 
an impotent agent. 

One other picture I wish to recall, and all 
who have awaited the dissipation of a heavy 
fog will recognize it. There is music in this 
picture, too, as in most sea-pictures, the wild, 
weird music of the siren's shrill cry and the 
240 




Rear Deck of the MAURET^Niyi 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

deep-toned chime of the boat's bells. All 
around the vessel the fog lies thick like a 
heavy, densely-woven veil of drab. If the 
sun shines at all it merely casts stray beams 
upon the veil, through which they sift in pal- 
pitating dust-flecks of gold. 

Suddenly, out from the thick wall of gray, 
a figure begins to take form, then like a fairy- 
ship, poised for flight over calm waters, a 
fishing-schooner comes slowly into view. 
All around a shimmer, light and pale tints 
mellowed by a misty glamour, outlines soft- 
ened to indefinite shapes — the little boat 
moves proudly out from its background of 
shadows and rides gayly over lightly rip- 
pling waters till, clear and distinctly, its 
masts, its bow, its stern, perhaps its crew 
assume tangible shapes, and the dream-ship 
becomes a reality. 

In much the same way the great, benig- 
nant goddess of the harbor rises like Venus 
from the sea-foam, a shadow-shape slowly 
i6 241 



WHEN THE SEA STORMS 

materializing, until, in dignity and proffered 
loving-kindness, she bends and beckons, her 
attitude symbolizing promise to the new 
arrival, " welcome home " to the traveler 
returning after a sojourn over the seas. 



FINIS 



j^l ^ 



vm 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



